Human rights in Muslim-majority countries
When the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, Saudi Arabia refused to sign it as they were of the view that sharia law had already set out the rights of men and women. To sign the UDHR was deemed unnecessary. What the UDHR did do was to start a debate on human rights in the Islamic world. Following years of deliberation, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) adopted the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration has received praise from a number of notable people. The Lebanese philosopher and diplomat Charles Malik called it "an international document of the first order of importance", while Eleanor Roosevelt—first chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) that drafted the Declaration—stated that it "may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere." In a speech on 5 October 1995, Pope John Paul II called the Declaration "one of the highest expressions of the human conscience of our time" but the Vatican never adopted the Declaration. In a statement on 10 December 2003 on behalf of the European Union, Marcello Spatafora said that the Declaration "placed human rights at the centre of the framework of principles and obligations shaping relations within the international community."