Article 2 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
This formal declaration of the equality of races was an unprecedented shift in global race relations. Article 2 of the UDHR was used by Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr to argue for civil rights in the USA in the 1960s.”
However, as we explore the history of racial equality in international law, we learn that these idealistic words only came about as a result of bloodshed.
The Nazi ideology declared black and brown races, alongside Slavic races, as subhuman (Untermensch). Jews were considered not human at all in Nazi thinking or “anti-race” (Gegenrasse).
After the slaughter of millions of Jews, Roma and Slavic peoples by the Nazis, the moral consciences of the Western world were awakened to the evils of racism, and this inspired the modern human rights regime under the United Nations.
However, the historical record shows that a racial equality clause was proposed to the precursor of the United Nations, the League of Nations, and this was rejected back in the year 1919.
In the paper by Karahasano˘glu, Toygun, “A Japanese Attempt at Racial Equality before 1919 Proposal”, the racial ideology of the Western colonial powers in the early 20th century was discussed as follows:
“This idea of ‘civilising mission’ and civilisational discourse was accompanied and justified based on the social Darwinistic idea of a ‘hierarchy of races,’ jettisoned and advocated by Count Arthur de Gobineau who asserted the idea that “civilisation,” as a specific teleological point to reach and obtain, was monopolized by the West owing to its white-race based genetic heritage (Saaler 2007, 275).”
According to this discourse, the white race, manifested and represented by the Western nations, was the Aryan race and superior to the two other categories of race delineated as Yellow and Black.
In this respect, through what is now contemporaneously called Scientific Racism, the idea that the Western hemisphere of the world has a ‘natural’ right to dominate and oversee the affairs of the different parts of the world has been legitimised on the basis of “white supremacy” (Acharya and Buzan 2019, 11).
In the context of being seen as an inferior race, the Japanese fought the Russo-Japanese War and claimed victory over Russia in 1905. In the Japanese mind, this was proof of their technological and military equality with the Western, white nations.
During World War 1 Japan sided with the Allies and seized German-held islands and ports in Asia. After the end of WW1 with the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the victorious allies of France, the UK, the USA and Russia sought to establish the League of Nations.
The League of Nations was the first intergovernmental organisation focused on maintaining world peace. Much like the United Nations, it aimed to prevent conflicts through collective security and negotiation.
Having fought alongside the Allies, the Japanese delegation considered they had earned the right to propose the Racial Equality clause as an amendment to the text of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Japanese diplomats drafted the text of the racial equality clause as follows:
“The equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contracting Parties agree to accord as soon as possible to all alien nationals of states, members of the League, equal and just treatment in every respect, making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality.”
This clause was important to seek to eliminate discrimination against Japanese immigrants in Western countries and to establish Japan on equal footing with the “white” nations.
The Western nations completely rejected this clause, with strong opposition coming from Australia due to its immigration policies preferring white immigrants over Asians.
While this clause is argued to be the first attempt at racial equality in International Law, it must be remembered that the legal context of the Japanese racial equality proposal was primarily political and between nations. The clause would not have provided a broad right to equality as seen in the later 1948 UDHR.
However, reflecting upon history, it is ironic that the West had the opportunity to consider eliminating racism before the genocides of WW2, and failed to do so.
The harshness of the Treaty of Versailles on the German economy helped create the conditions for Hitler’s rise to power. The rejection of the racial equality clause was used as a pretext for the Empire of Japan to wage war on Western powers and seize their holdings in Asia during WW2.
There are many lessons to be learned from this period of history, but the one I close with is the fact that it was an Eastern nation, Japan, that first proposed the concept of racial equality in international law, not the West.
