Episode five: A Magna Carta for All Humanity | Unholy Histories podcast 

In the aftermath of two world wars, the nations of a fledgling United Nations set themselves an unprecedented task: to agree, for the first time in history, a single statement of the rights belonging to every human being, everywhere. The result, adopted in Paris in December 1948, was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – a document drafted over two years, debated almost word by word, and grounded not in any one nation’s tradition but in the idea of a common humanity. How that idea took shape, who carried it there, and why it still matters are the subject of this week’s episode of Unholy Histories.

The fifth episode of our podcast traces the humanist ideas and individuals behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the landmark text from which all modern international human rights law descends.

Joining hosts Andrew Copson and Madeleine Goodall this week are Bill Cooke, historian and senior editor of Free Inquiry, whose books include A Wealth of Insights: Humanist Thought Since the Enlightenment and H. G. Wells and the 21st Century; and Francesca Klug, human rights scholar, visiting professor at the LSE Centre for the Study of Human Rights, and author of Values for a Godless Age and A Magna Carta for All Humanity.

Together, the panel discusses the long run-up to 1948 and the people who made the Declaration possible. The conversation begins with the groundwork laid before the war – including H. G. Wells, whose 1940 Rights of Man helped popularise the case for a written declaration of universal rights, and whose ideas, Cooke argues, have been unjustly written out of the story. It moves on to the drafting itself, and to the figure at its centre: Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the UN commission that produced the Declaration and is widely credited with holding its fractious deliberations together. Around her, the episode introduces the others whose traditions shaped the text – René Cassin, the French jurist who wrote the article on duties to the community; Charles Malik, the Lebanese philosopher; and P. C. Chang, the Chinese delegate often described as a Confucian humanist – along with Julian Huxley, first Director-General of UNESCO, the body founded on the conviction that, since war begins in the minds of men, peace must be built there too.

A recurring theme is the deliberate universalism of the Declaration, and how hard-won it was. Its drafters avoided grounding rights in God or nature: a proposed amendment to add a reference to God was put to a vote and lost, and the text reaches instead for the idea of a “common human family” as justification enough. The episode makes the case that the Declaration is best understood not as an export of Western values but as an alchemy of traditions and notes that some of its most progressive amendments came not from the West but from the delegates of colonised nations. The drafters also added a striking word to the Enlightenment vocabulary of reason: conscience, the capacity to empathise, on the argument that reason without it can lead to very bad results. When the Declaration was finally adopted in December 1948, no nation voted against it, though eight abstained.

The conversation also offers a stark warning, with Klug noting that the international human rights order is now “tottering on the edge”, with Western states, ironically, among those turning away from it; Cooke argues that a rights discourse built on an assumed abundance of resources must be rethought for a century of climate change and scarcity. Both agree that the Declaration’s universalism remains its most contested – and most necessary – idea.

Tune in to this week’s episode as we uncover the thinkers who helped turn the hope of a common humanity into the foundation of international law.

New audio episodes of Unholy Histories arrive every Wednesday, followed by video versions on the Humanists UK YouTube channel every Thursday.