12 February 2024
Welcome to the fourth session of the course on International Human Rights. Today we are going to look at the broader issue of enforcement outside the context of the Conventions, which have a particular enforcement mechanism. The body that originally set up the Universal Declaration was the Commission for Human Rights, an intergovernmental body. Until the Conventions were adopted and ratified, for most human rights (the exception was women's rights for which there was a separate Commission) it was the Commission that provided for enforcement. This quickly proved to be problematic. What would be called Western States would accuse state connected with the Soviet Union with violations of civil and political rights and the Soviet Union and allies would accuse Western States with violations of economic, social and cultural rights. In many ways, this involved a stalemate.
In order to deal with this, the Commission, with the support of the Secretariat -- as well as NGOs in specific areas, would appoint an individual expert, called a Special Rapporteur to investigate the issues, either as a thematic manner or for a specific country. For this session, you will be looking at the Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights. This post was created because international coercive methods like sanctions (but also including military activities) had effects on civilian populations that violated their human rights. Some sanctions are enabled by a decision of the UN Security Council and they, presumably, take civilian consequences into account. The same is not true when only one State (hence “unilateral”) does so and this is something that needs to be reviewed.
The Council also examines Universal Periodic Reviews that all States are expected to present periodically. It does so through a Universal Periodic Review Working Group that, from 23 January to 3 February 2023 looked at the human rights records of 13 States.
The Commission itself had a defect. It reported to the Economic and Social Council and over time many governments felt that this reduced its impact. In a reform in 2006, the Commission was upgraded to a Council having 47 seats distributed geographically:
The Council reports to the UN
General Assembly (its Third Committee).
Members of the Council serve for a period of three years and are not eligible for immediate re-election after serving two consecutive terms. Over the last twelve years 107 Member States have served as members. It now has a three-week session and covers many issues. In fact, at the 2017 36th session, it had a panel on unilateral coercive measures.
The Council is supported by a Secretariat unit. In the early days of
the United Nations, this was called the Human Rights Division headed by a D-2
director. It was originally located in New York but, supposedly to reduce
its exposure to political issues, was moved to Geneva (where there was more
office space). In 1993, there was a World Conference on Human Rights that
took place in Vienna (I attended this, on behalf of the Division for the Advancement
of Women). One consequence was to upgrade the leadership through the
creation of a High Commissioner for Human Rights at the USG level. There
have been seven High Commissioners, the most recent being Volker Türk of Austria. The High Commissioner is
supposed to be an independent voice for human rights. His predecessor was
Michelle Bachelet.
To see the independent voice, High Commissioner Al Hussein made a wide-ranging opening
statement to the Council in September 2017 that commented on human rights
issues in 40 countries. He was then replaced by Michelle Bachelet, former
president of Chile (twice) and formerly the first head of UN-Women and she is
now replaced by Volker Türk.
From the beginning of the United Nations an effort has been made to bring non-governmental organizations (called civil society now) into its work. There are many in human rights and we will look at two of them, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, since they are among the broadest in terms of mandate. In specific areas there are other NGOs.
Another mechanism is the Special Rapporteurs, called "special procedures of the human rights council". As the OHCHR website says:
The special procedures of the Human Rights Council are independent human rights experts with mandates to report and advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective. The system of Special Procedures is a central element of the United Nations human rights machinery and covers all human rights: civil, cultural, economic, political, and social. As of 1 February 2023, there are 45 thematic and 14 country mandates.
With the support of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), special procedures undertake country visits; act on individual cases and concerns of a broader, structural nature by sending communications to States and others in which they bring alleged violations or abuses to their attention; conduct thematic studies and convene expert consultations, contribute to the development of international human rights standards, engage in advocacy, raise public awareness, and provide advice for technical cooperation. Special procedures report annually to the Human Rights Council; the majority of the mandates also reports to the General Assembly. Their tasks are defined in the resolutions creating or extending their mandates.