Well it has taken a whole week, but my anxiety has set in. I have never been officially diagnosed with anxiety, although I have learned over the past 4 years at BYU that I get extremely anxious when it comes to writing assignments for all classes, especially ones for my major. Sometimes it gets so bad, that my body completely shuts down and I sleep until 3 in the morning and then get up and write furiously for 4 hours and get an ok paper written. I don't really know why that happens. Part of it is because I have a really bad habit of procrastinating which compounds the problem and part of it is probably because somewhere along the line I have convinced myself I am not a good writer and since I am a perfectionist I would rather not try, then to try and fail. I know this is a lie because over the summer I was given 15 minutes to write a section of the Senator's floor statement, and my section made the final cut, and I wrote another statement all by myself that my supervisor really liked and only required a few changes. If I can write for a senator I certainly can write for a BYU professor. I also know that I won't actually fail, but once again I have conditioned myself that anything below a 90% is bad, and anything below a 80% is failing.
So I am sitting in my living room looking at my assignment for my capstone class that is due tomorrow. It isn't that scary, and I know there is no wrong answer, but I can't bring myself to begin the paper. This class is going to be great. in the past week I have learned more about how to research for papers than I have learned in my whole college career. That should be a sign that PLSC 200 should be revamped. I've tried the don't start at the beginning strategy of writing, but that doesn't work so well for me. I am not writing this to get sympathy from anyone, or to hear people say "buck up" cause lets face it, I know I will eventually have to take a capstone, so why quit now, besides "C's get degrees." Instead I am writing to get the anxiety out, and I am actually going to try something new. Instead of writing my paper I am going to blog my paper, so beware, the post might get long. In fact, instead of shutting down this semester, I might actually blog my first drafts. So if you want to read about human rights and democracy I might have some useful things to say this semester. If you don't care, I'll warn you now, stop reading now.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, like most international declarations and conventions went through a series of drafts before being approved by the United Nations General Assembly. Throughout its many drafts, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remained fairly consistent and the drafts are very similar. Some similarities between the first draft, and the final declaration are the right to marry, although the language is different very different, and protection against torture. Interesting differences between the drafts are that the first draft does not include the right to social programs, as well as the right to life of the unborn fetus.
The right to marry is not very surprising, however the specific language between what is known as the "Humphreys Draft" and the final declaration is surprisingly different. Article 13 in the "Humphreys Draft" states " Ever one has the right to contract marriage in accordance with the laws of the State" (Glendon, 272). This language remained in the declaration until the June 1947 draft of the Human Rights Commission where this article is absent, but in the final declaration passed by the UN in 1948 it states in Article 16 "(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage, and at its dissolution." (Gledon 312). The different language is puzzling to me. When the first draft of the declaration, Humphreys drew on many international documents to create the declaration. It makes sense that to appease Islam references to marriage would include the caveat that marriage is in accordance with state laws. This seems perfectly reasonable, however it was changed in the final draft. This could be explained by the influence of Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a noted feminist and as an influential member of the commission, she was able to convince other delegations that equal right in marriage should be included. This could be verified by looking at minutes of commission meetings as well as speeches made at the the General Assembly. Looking for statements from the United States as well as other member states about this article will help determine if this hypothesis is true. In addition looking for newspaper articles quoting other officials specifically mentioning Eleanor Roosevelt and her role may also answer the question.
Perhaps even more interesting than the rewording of Article 16 is Chile's proposal in the June 1947 draft to amend Article 7 to include "Unborn children and incurables, mentally defectives and lunatics shall of the right to life" (Glendon, 282). This language was not in the first draft, and disappears in subsequent drafts. Why would Chile include this? One explanation is that abortions were beginning to occur in Chile and the government felt that it was important to protect the right to life, therefore, they proposed the language, but since the issue was too controversial no other state wanted to address the issue, so the language was never added. This would be very hard to prove. To assess Chile's view on abortion I could look at government documents regarding the issue. Memo's might give insights to a possible concern about abortions. I could also look at newspaper articles to see if there were any pro-choice activists that made the news. If abortion appeared in the news frequently enough it might point towards the attitudes of the citizen's of Chile. To determine if other state's thought the issue was controversial, and that is why they didn't want to address it, meetings of the minutes where this draft was written would be extremely helpful in determining the attitudes of different states. Another explanation to why this proposal was made by Chile but not included is in the balance of power. Chile might have been trying to exert influence in the document, but as a weak state, it could not change much. They thought this was one area where they could contribute, maybe on behalf of other weak states, but in the end the strong states such as France, the United States, and Russia prevailed, and they convinced others not to accept the proposed changes. This could be verified by internal government documents and personal accounts of the negotiations. I would be looking for conversations between Chile and other states about the proposal to determine the motives, as well as conversations between strong states for reasons why they opposed the language, and if they were able to persuade the commission to vote against the proposal. Another source would be the voting record of the commission. If I found that a lot of weak states voted in favor of the proposed changes I could determine that it was a display of power by the weak states, on the other hand, if they didn't, it could be determined that the strong states were victorious.
If you are still reading this, hope you found my rough idea's interesting.
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