Human Rights Day: Educator and reformer Hansa Jivraj Mehta at the UN (File Photo)
Human Rights Day 2020: Two Indian women, Hansa Jivraj Mehta and Lakshmi Menon, played a pioneering role in the formulation of the Universal Human Rights Declaration (UDHR) in the mid-40s. On Human Rights Day we remember the two Indian women reformers who played a key role in making critical changes in the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hansa Jivraj Mehta, the Indian delegate to the UN Commission on Human Rights, from 1947 to 1948, had insisted on rephrasing the line All men are born free and equal to All human beings are born free and equal in the Article 1 of the Declaration. Hansa Jivraj Mehta ensured a more gender sensitive language in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.