ABSTRACT
In A pril 1945, when delegates from fifty countries gathered in San Fran cisco to put the finishing touches on a proposed charter for the United N a tions, representatives o f Latin American and Caribbean nations arrived with a plan to work for the inclusion of an international bill of rights. That idea was far from the minds o f the A llied leaders who called the conference. Their draft proposal for the new organization had been negotiated in a much more exclusive m eeting a few months earlier at Dumbarton Oaks. It was only af ter Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin had settled everything that was most important to them that they announced a m eeting where the rest o f the A l lies could have a say. The '‘B ig Three” leaders do not seem to have contem-
plated that the San Francisco conference m ight produce major changes in their design. As Churchill had put it to Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, when discussing the extent to which “smaller powers” should participate in the peace process: “The eagle should permit the small birds to sing and care not wherefore they sang.” 1 W hat Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin wanted was a collective security arrangement for the postwar period. Human rights ranked so low among the priorities o f the major powers that they mentioned it only once, briefly, in their draft charter.
