Drafting on the Basis of Dignity: John Peters Humphrey’s Contribution to the UDHR

Abstract

Despite his idiosyncratic biographical journey, John Peters Humphrey became the first director of the Division of Human Rights at the United Nations and one of Canada’s most distinguished civil servants. Charged with preparing an initial draft of what would become the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), he had a pivotal role in rooting the human rights articulated in the UDHR in the concept of human dignity. Implicitly drawing on his understanding of a Christian morality freed from its “tommyrot,” his largely unrecognized organizing criteria for selecting and articulating the rights included in the initial draft appears to have been “the dignity of man.”