Image

John P. Humphrey (1905–1995) was a Canadian legal scholar, jurist, and human rights advocate. 

While teaching at McGill University (his alma mater) in the early 1940s, Humphrey befriended Henri Laugier, a refugee from France who was working on behalf of the Free French. Laugier would later become the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. In 1946, Laugier appointed Humphrey as the first Director of the United Nations Division of Human Rights, within the United Nations Secretariat.

He created the first preliminary draft of what was to become the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after consulting with the executive group of the Commission, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt. On the night of December 10, 1948, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the Declaration, dubbed by Eleanor Roosevelt as “the international Magna Carta of all humankind.” Humphrey remained with the UN for the next twenty years, retiring in 1966 to resume teaching at McGill.

_{Photo Credit: UN Photo/JO}