The work of the Human Rights Council is definitely underestimated. This point immediately struck me when I was elected President of the Council for the year 2015, and international and German media representatives approached me for interviews. “Isn’t the Council a tiger without teeth?” “What can the Council achieve without being able to impose sanctions like the Security Council?” “Looking …
Last week’s appalling attack against journalists and police officers at the satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and the cascade of comment and counter-comment that has followed, remind us once again of both the importance of, and the sensitivities that surround, the relationship between freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and non-discrimination. Identifying and understanding the contours of that relationship …
Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the emergence of an international legal framework for protecting and promoting human rights, new challenges have constantly emerged in our rapidly-changing world. These challenges include climate change; the fight against poverty; global terrorist movements; issues related to migration; threats to privacy in cyberspace; or unforeseen economic and financial crises …
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism was one of the main innovations introduced by UN member states at the time of the creation of the Human Rights Council in 2006. The first cycle of this global review mechanism saw all 193 UN members have their human rights records reviewed by their peers and receive recommendations for improvement. There was broad …
10 Octobre 2014, Journée mondiale contre la peine de mort La peine de mort est un acte cruel, inhumain et dégradant : elle n’est en rien utile à la lutte contre la criminalité et elle est toujours le signe de l’échec de la justice. En ce 25ème anniversaire de l’adoption du Protocole international visant à abolir la peine de mort, …
The right, and indeed the responsibility, of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to critique governments, expose and pursue accountability for human rights violations, and advocate for changes in law, policy and practice should be uncontroversial and uncontested. This is particularly the case at the UN Human Rights Council, the world’s apex body for human rights debate and dialogue, the mandate of which …
As the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, begins his term in office, H.E. Ambassador Alexandre Fasel, Catarina de Albuquerque, H.E. Ambassador Triyono Wibowo, Ted Piccone, H.E. Ambassador Carsten Staur, Professor Sir Nigel Rodley, Harriet Berg, Phil Lynch, H.E. Ambassador Mehmet Ferden ÇarikçI, Professor John Knox, H.E. Ambassador Jorge Lomónaco, Roland Chauville, Dr. Rosa …
…or at least, it did. In the early 1950s, as diplomats in New York sat down to negotiate what would become the two international human rights covenants, Syria’s delegation to the General Assembly’s Third Committee was in the vanguard of efforts to arm the UN’s human rights machinery with stronger implementation mechanisms to ‘pierce the veil of national sovereignty’* that …
On 20th March 2014 the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) attempted to hold a minute of silence in the UN Human Rights Council’s chamber in memory of Cao Shunli. Ms Cao was arrested on 14th September 2013 as she attempted to board a flight to Geneva. A human rights defender in China, Ms Cao was en route to the …
The United Nations Human Rights Council emerged in response to the failures of the former Commission on Human Rights to effectively implement the rich normative framework of human rights standards that most members of the international community have committed themselves to. Our human rights architecture in 2014 appears to be both solid and comprehensive: The Universal Declaration on Human Rights …
