Basic Information
Name: Charles Habib Malik
Nicknames: Doctor Malik, Malik the Greek
Born: sometime in 1906
Died: December 28th, 1987
Nationality: Lebanese
Hometown: Btourram, Lebanon
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: diplomat and philosopher
Education: University of Freiburg, Harvard University
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Parents: Habib Malik and Zarifa Karam
Sibling: Ramzi Habib Malik
Spouse: Eva Habib Badr
Children: Habib
Friends: Karim Azkoul, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Dag Hammarskjöld
Foes: Palestine Liberation Organization and Andrei Gromyko
Analysis
Man of (Four) Principles
When the U.N. was first started, people around the world asked, "What's this thing going to do, exactly?" Some people are still asking that question.
Charles Malik believed that protecting and promoting human rights ought to be the organization's primary purpose. A signer of the original U.N. Charter, Malik was also considered one of the intellectual leaders of the drafting committee for the UDHR (source).
Malik hailed from the newly independent country of Lebanon and was his nation's ambassador to the U.N. from the inception of the organization until 1955. After the drafting of the declaration, Malik's most important job was convincing the U.N.'s 58 member nations to adopt the document. We're not sure, but we'd guess it was a little like herding cats.
A Harvard-educated philosopher, Malik brought a philosopher's perspective to the enterprise. His "Four Basic Principles," which guided his UDHR work, were:
- The individual comes before any state or ethnic/cultural group.
- The most valuable possessions of individuals are their minds and consciences.
- Coercion by states, governments, or religions of individuals is wrong, wrong, wrong.
- An individual's conscience is the best judge of right and wrong.
Malik argued to the assembly that even a person with economic security couldn't be free if he or she was denied freedom of religion and thought (source). Human rights were all about the individual. This was an important argument against the competing philosophy of the Soviet Union, which argued that human rights could only be exercised through the collective and the state.
Religious liberty was also a key pillar of the declaration to Malik, who was a Greek Orthodox Christian in a country of both Christians and Muslims (source). A deeply religious man, Malik made frequent reference to his Christian faith in his speeches (source).
Malik remained at the U.N. for 10 years after the UDHR was adopted, and he returned in 1957 to serve two more years, the last one as the president of the General Assembly.
"[The UDHR] will, in essence, be an answer to the question: what is man?" Malik once said. Decades before The Big Lebowski attempted to answer that question, Malik was at the front of the pack.