In the spring of 1945, as the Second World War was drawing to a close on the European continent, another significant event was taking place across the Atlantic. Representatives of 50 nations met in San Francisco April 25-June 26 at a historic conference that led to the creation of the United Nations.

The “San Francisco Conference,” as it has been called, was a pivotal moment in the development of a shared international effort to promote peace, human dignity and the common good — ideals that would receive a privileged expression three years later in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

The Catholic Church, while fully aware of the many problems and pitfalls that have emerged in the process of international organization, has nonetheless been an ardent supporter of such endeavors at cooperation among nations. This is a path that Pope Leo XIV no doubt intends to continue, as he indicated at the opening Mass of his pontificate about his desire for dialogue “with all women and men of goodwill, in order to build a new world where peace reigns.”

Nonetheless, many people today question whether such international collaboration is still possible in light of the practical reality of a complex global situation and because of the divergent ways in which international law has been understood. In this regard, Mary Ann Glendon, noted legal scholar and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, offered a timely contribution to the ongoing debate on international rule of law with an April 28 lecture at Princeton University entitled, “Can the International Human Rights Project Be Saved?”

Glendon began her talk with an overview of the consensus regarding human rights, which emerged after World War II among various countries. The Allied nations desired to articulate a standard for the prosecution of German and Japanese leaders and also wanted to offer guidelines that might strengthen international stability so as to avoid future conflict. Smaller countries also made their voices heard at the San Francisco Conference and insisted that the Allies live up to the ideals they had championed during the war.

As a result of these and other factors, the 1945 United Nations Charter, a fruit of the conference, placed “fundamental human rights” at the center of the aims of this new international organization and further specified “the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” The 1948 Declaration on Human Rights, approved without any dissenting votes, would contribute greatly to the emergence of human rights as a key notion in public discourse.

“By the 1980s,” Glendon asserted, this text “had become the most prominent symbol, and provided the principal vocabulary, of the great grassroots movements that led to the demise of apartheid in South Africa and the collapse of the seemingly indestructible totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe.”

“Even today,” she continued, “it provides the principal language for cross-national discussions of human freedom and the principal ethical reference points in those discussions.”

Despite this success, in recent decades, many have become disillusioned with the language of human rights — and with good reason. Glendon pointed to one cause of such disenchantment: “the selective attitude toward human rights on the part of the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.”

The U.N. Declaration contains a wide variety of rights, some of which regard the basic civil rights of the person, such as “the right to life, liberty and security of person,” but also a set of social and economic rights, which were consonant with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and many European constitutions. Such latter rights include the right to work, to a just wage, and to a minimum standard of living.

Glendon argued that during the Cold War, the two sides “tore” the U.N. Declaration “in half, so to speak, with the U.S. championing the political and civil principles and the Soviet Union emphasizing the social and economic principles.”

From the 1990s onward, as Glendon further noted, activists have used the language of human rights to embrace a broad set of supposed rights that were never part of the original U.N. Declaration, including abortion. There were efforts “to make everything from access to the internet to free university education a universal right.”

Such challenges in the implementation of the ideal of human rights led to a central question that Glendon desired to address: Can the international human-rights project — that ideal of so many nations after World War II, which the Church has shown such sympathy with — be saved?

Glendon did not offer a Yes or No answer to this question. Rather, she desired to offer a set of considerations that might help reinvigorate the cause today.

In the first place, she emphasized that “the number of principles that people of vastly different cultures will accept as a common standard is relatively modest.” The 1947 declaration rested precisely on such a wide consensus. To the contrary, as she commented, such a broad-based vision of human rights was undermined by attempts to impose new rights in a top-down manner without arriving at a consensus about such supposed rights.

Glendon then stressed the importance of respect for the diversity of ways in which the principles of human rights might be applied in different cultures, the essential interdependence of the various rights, and the importance of the principle of subsidiarity — a principle from Catholic social thought that has made its way into international law.

While Glendon didn’t offer a facile response to the question of whether the human-rights project is worth saving, her lecture undoubtedly pointed in the direction of a resounding “Yes.”

“Despite everything,” she concluded, the human-rights project “still accomplishes a great deal. Even today, hardly any flagrant or repeated instance of rights abuse now escapes publicity. And even today, most governments go to great lengths to avoid being blacklisted as notorious violators.”

Human rights, understood in their genuine sense, express an essential goal of a society that desires peace and justice. The Church, long an ardent defender of the rights of the person, will never remain indifferent to such ideals.

This cause, moreover, constitutes a vital area in which Catholics and non-Catholics, believers and nonbelievers, can foster a constructive dialogue and find points of agreement.

Princeton political scientist Stephen Macedo, in his response to Glendon’s lecture, praised her effort to draw attention to basic political and civil principles that persons on various parts of the political spectrum might agree on. “The human-rights project,” he remarked, “is not about instituting anyone’s ideals of perfect justice: It is about marking off certain abuses by governments as beyond the pale, unacceptable, illegitimate and worthy of condemnation by the international community.”

Hence, the human-rights project, far from being a utopian illusion, constitutes a noble and practical aim that can continue to fruitfully inform our civil discourse.

Glendon concluded by admitting the limitations of the human-rights project, while also affirming its value. “Yes, it is flawed. Yes, dreadful violations still occur. But it has inspired large numbers of women and men to try to do something about it, even though they knew that their efforts, too, were less than perfect.”

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