Anti-colonial movements drastically changed UN composition and human rights debates

Evidence

The period that separated the adoption of the UDHR in 1948 from the adoption of the human rights covenants in 1966 seems at first to have been a period of just such cascading rights claims. Victorious anti-colonial movements drastically changed both the composition of the UN and the terms of human rights debates. In 1955, delegates from twenty-nine African and Asian countries gathered at Bandung in Indonesia, and declared that the right of peoples and nations to self-determination is ‘a pre-requisite for the full enjoyment of all fundamental Human Rights’. Two years later, in 1957, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African nation to win its independence; in 1960, dubbed the ‘Year of Africa’, it was followed by seventeen more African nations, including Nigeria, whose delegate was so proud to participate in the drafting of the human rights covenants. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 229

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader human-rights discourse literature (e.g. Moyn’s ‘Not Enough’ on the rise of human rights) and the Bandung moment debates. — connects to: Anticolonial independence movements doubled UN membership by the 1966 covenants — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 227; Anti-colonial delegates reversed civilising logic, framing human rights as the route to progress — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 272; Colonial powers opposed universal human rights extending to their own subjects — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 268 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-colonial delegates reversed civilising logic, framing human rights as the route to progress #expands (0.92) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 272
• Colonial powers opposed universal human rights extending to their own subjects #qualifies (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 268
• Anti-colonial rights advocates unwittingly armed later coercive interventions in global capitalism’s interests #complicates (0.73) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 273
• Amnesty’s individualist human rights differed sharply from anti-colonial UN economic self-determination #expands (0.72) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 351
• The First World War era sparked anti-colonial stirrings across Asia and Africa #expands (0.72)