User:MrsHuggins/sandbox

In response to reports of human rights atrocities during World War II, the Institute in 1942 appointed a committee of lawyers and political scientists, supposedly representing the principal cultures of the world, to compile a list of agreed-upon individual rights: an international bill of rights. The drafting committee for the Statement of Essential Human Rights included representatives from Britain, Canada, China, France, pre-Nazi Germany, India, Italy, Latin America, Poland, Soviet Russia, Spain, and Syria. The committee reported to the ALI Council in February 1944. Although the project was never presented for a vote by the ALI membership, the Statement of Essential Human Rights was published in 1945 by the Americans United for World Organizations, Inc., independently of the Institute. Along with other sources, the Statement was then used to prepare the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the General Assembly adopted on December 10, 1948. In a 2003 speech, Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, thanked ALI for its “pioneering and prophetic work” on the Statement of Essential Human Rights.