The UDHR was adopted on 10 December 1948 by the General Assembly by a vote of 48 in favour, none against, and eight abstentions: the Soviet Union, Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, People's Republic of Poland, Union of South Africa, Czechoslovakia, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

On the one hand, according to some authors, each of them had their own reason to abstain. Saudi Arabia probably did not agree with articles 18, everyone has the right “to change his religion or belief”, and 16 that talks about equal marriage rights. Furthermore, in the case of South Africa, they were trying to protect their system of apartheid since they were violating many of the articles. Moreover, from the point of view of the communist nations, the UDHR did not condemn enough fascism and Nazism (Danchin). Additionally, the USSR based their abstention on article 13, which states the right of citizens to leave their countries because they did not agree with it. (Glendon, 2001)

On the other hand, other authors, such as Hofstede, classify them as a group when it comes to cultural value dimensions. Two of the values he remarks is the masculinity and the power distance there is between individuals in those cultures. For example Saudi Arabia and South Africa have a cultures were masculinity prevails in front of femininity, what is the same, they have a strong masculinity side. These cultures tend to be more competitive, have preference for achievement, assertiveness and material reward for success, on top of that, in these cultures, men are superior that women and this is the reason why we can assume that they rejected the article 16 were it states that men and women have the same rights in terms of marriage and that is not like that in those countries. Moreover. In these countries their religion is imposed and there is not freedom to choose which fails to fulfill the article 16.
Also, some of these countries have the power distance indicator quite high with means that are cultures which accept a hierarchical order. We can assume that these countries were against the articles that state equality between individuals, that is, articles 1, 7 and 16.

As a conclusion, their cultural values and their own interests were the ones that made them abstain to vote.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Danchin, Peter. "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Drafting History – 10”. Plenary Session of the Third General Assembly Session.
• Glendon, Mary Ann. 2001. “A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. pp. 169–70. Random House.