On June 26, the 75th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter, JBI published a new report recounting AJC's role in ensuring the inclusion of human rights as a principal purpose of the UN and led an AJC Advocacy Anywhere event with two former U.S. Ambassadors to the UN examining the organization's enduring role in U.S. foreign policy.
The new JBI publication, Making a Difference: AJC's Advocacy for Human Rights in the United Nations Charter, details the efforts made by AJC leaders Judge Joseph Proskauer, AJC President, and Jacob Blaustein, Chair of AJC’s Executive Committee, to ensure that the preeminent multilateral organization to emerge from the ashes of the Holocaust would have human rights at its core.
Authored by Felice Gaer, Director of AJC's Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI), the report details the essential contributions of AJC and other non-governmental organizations which were invited to send representatives to serve as "consultants" to the U.S. delegation to the 1945 Conference on International Organizations in San Francisco, where the UN Charter was finalized.
The NGO consultants engaged with the U.S. delegation on a number of issues, especially on the need to ensure that human rights would be a central purpose of the UN and a body dedicated to addressing human rights would be created. Among the consultants, Proskauer and Blaustein played a particularly decisive role in persuading the American delegation to seek the key human rights-related amendments to the draft UN Charter. With the U.S taking the lead among all 50 countries participating in the San Francisco conference, the consultants’ proposals on human rights were incorporated in the UN Charter signed on June 26, 1945.
An abbreviated version of the report, also published on June 26 on the Universal Rights Group's URG Insights blog series, is available here.
Also on June 26, AJC convened a virtual event as part of its Advocacy Anywhere series entitled "The United Nations at 75: What Role in U.S. Foreign Policy?" The event featured former U.S. Ambassadors to the UN John Negroponte and David Pressman, in conversation with Ms. Gaer about the UN's enduring value as a forum to advance U.S. interests - including promotion of human rights - globally.
A recording of the event can be viewed here: