International PEN Charter

The Charter of International PEN has guided, unified, and inspired its members for the last 60 years. Its principles were implicit in the organisation's founding in 1921. However, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which also celebrates its sixtieth anniversary, International PEN's Charter was fired in the harsh realities of the Second World War. Approved at Congress in Copenhagen in 1948, International PEN's Charter was 22 years in the making.

International PEN's first president John Galsworthy wrote the first three articles of the Charter after the 1926 Congress in Berlin, where tensions arose among writers from west and east, and debate flared about the political versus nonpolitical nature of International PEN. Back in London, Galsworthy worked in the drawing room of PEN's founder Catharine Amy Dawson Scott on a formal statement to ‘serve as a touchstone of PEN action.' Galsworthy's resolution passed easily at the 1927 Congress in Brussels, and these articles remain part of the International PEN Charter.

With the rise of Nazism in Germany, PEN and its principles were tested at the 1933 Congress in Dubrovnik. A few months before, books had been burned in bonfires across Germany. At the Congress, led by International PEN President H.G. Wells, the Assembly of Delegates confirmed the Galsworthy principles. The following day the Germans tried to prevent an exiled German Jewish writer from speaking. While some supported the Germans, the great majority rejected the German position and reaffirmed the principles they had just voted on. The German delegation walked out of the Congress and essentially out of PEN until after the Second World War.

At the first Congress after World War II in 1946 in Stockholm the American Center, backed by the English Centre, presented two resolutions. One urged PEN members ‘to champion the ideals of one humanity living at peace in one world.' The other addressed censorship. Debate on the wording and scope of the resolution continued at the 1947 Zurich Congress, but eventually delegates agreed, and the resolution became the foundation of the fourth article of the International PEN Charter.

Finally at the 1948 Congress, the Assembly of Delegates approved the Charter of PEN in its entirety. Its principles continue to guide and unify the diverse 145 PEN Centres in 104 countries around the world.

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
Former International Secretary and Vice-President of International PEN