Office of the Historian

297. Letter From the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Cleveland) to the Representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights (Tree)1

Washington, June 25, 1963.

Dear Marietta:

Thank you very much for your reports on the 19th Session of the Human Rights Commission. I have been asked to acknowledge also your submission to the Secretary. We appreciate your comments on the issues at stake, and especially on the political setting in which they were considered.

We are, of course, gratified that the draft declaration on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination could be adopted in a reasonably satisfactory form. The draft Declaration will undoubtedly be a major item in the General Assembly next fall, and we should plan accordingly. As always, we are grateful for your careful presentation of United States positions in the Commission and your thoughtful constructive recommendations for further work.

I also have your letter recommending that the United States send an observer to the UN seminar on The Rights of the Child in Warsaw.2 I agree with you that the United States should have an observer there and I hope very much that you can carry through your plan to attend. We are looking into the possibilities regarding John Means.

It looks more and more as if this next General Assembly will be a kind of Human Rights Assembly, what with the impact of our own domestic situation, the Portuguese and South African racial issues, and your own draft Declaration on Racial Discrimination. I recently gave a speech in Chicago on the Pacem in Terris encyclical. A copy is enclosed.3

Meanwhile, just so you are not wholly deprived of reading matter, I’m sending along a little essay on the Hot Springs Conference of [Page 656] twenty years ago, which has a couple of passages I think you may find amusing.4

Warmest regards,

Sincerely,

Harlan Cleveland5
  1. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1960–63, SOC 14 ECOSOC. Limited Official Use. Drafted by Nason on June 10 and retyped on June 20. Cleared by Robert Rossow, Jr. (IO/OES), Richard N. Gardner (IO), John N. Washburn (L/UNA), and Marian Stilson (OIC).↩
  2. Not found.↩
  3. Not printed. For text of Cleveland’s speech, see Department of State Bulletin, July 8, 1963, pp. 38–43.↩
  4. Not printed.↩
  5. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩