著者

小阪 裕城

出版者

長野県短期大学

雑誌

長野県短期大学紀要 = Journal of Nagano Prefectural College (ISSN:02861178)

巻号頁・発行日

no.73, pp.65-75, 2018

著者

小阪 裕城

出版者

一般財団法人 日本国際政治学会

雑誌

国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2018, no.193, pp.193_92-193_107, 2018-09-10 (Released:2018-12-19)

参考文献数

62

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This article examines the politics involved in the right to petition the United Nations (U.N.) in the drafting process of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Experiences of war and ideas such as “the Atlantic Charter” published by the allied countries inspired people around the world to become politically active. They started to seek not only a victory over the Axis countries but also a victory over injustices they face in their respective countries. When the U.N. Human Rights Commission began drafting the International Bill of Rights in 1947, it had already received many petitions from those people. This paper tries to answer the question of how nations responded to this situation, and how and why the article on the right to petition the U.N. was finally deleted from the drafting process of the declaration.As major African American civil rights groups were trying to send their petition to the U.N., internationalizing racial problems in the United States, the issue concerning the right to petition became an important issue for the U.S. government. The Interdepartmental Committee on International Social Policy, which was established by the Truman administration in 1946, discussed the issue of whether the international bill of human rights should be a legally binding “convention” or “declaration,” which was not supposed to be legally binding. While some countries such as Australia and India proposed mechanisms to implement a human rights charter, the U.S. State Department was reluctant to draft a binding convention at that moment, fearing that it was so provocative for the conservatives that they would disagree with the U.S. commitment to the United Nations.Separate from the American concern, the U.N. Human Rights Commission decided to draft both a convention and a declaration and started to make a series of drafts of the declaration that included the article on the right to petition the U.N. U.S. policymakers discussed these and were concerned about the article of the right to petition. What worried the U.S. is that recognizing the right to petition would stimulate “unwarranted hopes” around the world. The U.S. tried to revise the draft articles by replacing the “right to petition the U.N.” with the “right to communicate with the U.N.” From the U.S. viewpoint, the right to petition the U.N. was misleading because people might think that the U.N. would consider petitions and would take action for redressal of grievances in their respective countries.Eventually, in 1948 the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without an article on the right to petition. Most of the earlier studies on the drafting process of the declaration have not examined international and domestic politics over the right to petition. Thus historians have usually described the Declaration as a part of the history of the formation of U.S. hegemony or as the beginning of the history of the successful development of the international human rights regime. Keeping in mind individuals as a subject of international law and politics, politics concerning the article on the right of petition allows us to analyze history from a different angle.

著者

小阪 裕城

出版者

一橋大学

巻号頁・発行日

2017

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129p

著者

小阪 裕城 Yuki Kosaka

出版者

関西外国語大学

雑誌

人権を考える = Thinking about human rights : 関西外国語大学人権教育思想研究所紀要 (ISSN:2189177X)

巻号頁・発行日

no.22, pp.37-58, 2019-03

著者

小阪 裕城

出版者

一般財団法人 日本国際政治学会

雑誌

国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2014, no.176, pp.176_43-176_56, 2014-03-31 (Released:2015-10-20)

参考文献数

53

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This article examines the American Jewish Committee (AJC)’s postwar planning based on “international human rights”. Since the end of the nineteenth century, Zionist movements had struggled to establish a Jewish state in Palestine as a solution for the so-called “Jewish question”. However, every Jew was not Zionist. There were non-Zionist groups in the United States, which had criticized Zionism. Focusing on the AJC, which was one of the most prominent and influential non-Zionist groups in the United States, this paper tries to answer the question of what the AJC aimed to do in the postwar international arena and why their plan did not work as an alternative to the Zionist solution. While Zionist had sought to establish a Jewish state, the AJC had tried to build an international human rights system as another solution for the Jewish question. They thought their plan could contribute to protection of rights of Jews all over the world. The AJC criticized Zionist because creation of a Jewish state was likely to be utilized by anti-Semitism movements and accelerate exclusion of Jews from each country. Therefore, the AJC sought to build an international system based on international human rights as a solution of the Jewish question. However, the AJC’s postwar plan and activities turned out to be infeasible when the relief of Jewish displaced persons (DPs) in the postwar Europe emerged as an urgent task before the AJC. The AJC lobbied Britain to admit those Jewish DPs into Palestine; at the same time they insisted that every country including the United States should reform their immigration law system to accept the DPs. It was necessary for the AJC to let those DPs acquire citizenship of any country under the aegis of international human rights system. In reality, such idea was difficult. First of all, the U.S. immigration law system stood in the way of the AJC’s activities. Having been dominated by the conservative GOP, it seemed that it was not easy for the U.S. Congress to allow the Jewish DPs to immigrate into the United States. In addition, because the severe situation in the DP camps in Europe became worse and worse, and because the extreme revisionist Zionists armed forces such as Irgun had escalated its terrorism in Palestine, the AJC could not help but cooperate with more moderate Zionists group, Jewish Agency. As a result, they supported partition of Palestine and creation of the Jewish state in order to relieve the DPs in Europe as soon as possible. Here we can see the transformation of the AJC’s postwar plan and activities.

著者

小阪 裕城

出版者

校倉書房

雑誌

歴史評論 (ISSN:03868907)

巻号頁・発行日

no.792, pp.61-74, 2016-04

著者

小阪 裕城

出版者

日本アメリカ史学会

雑誌

アメリカ史研究 (ISSN:03878228)

巻号頁・発行日

no.39, pp.59-78, 2016