Module 5

Explore the issues – Is it a breach?

Flag Of The United Nations
Flag Of The United Nations

What powers does the UN have to enforce international human rights law? How well-equipped is the UN to monitor states’ human rights performance and to hold governments that violate rights accountable? To get started in answering these questions read the statements below and indicate whether you think they are true or false.

1. The UN has three objectives – to prevent and bring to an end armed conflict, to promote sustainable development, and to protect human rights. Each area of activity gets roughly one-third of the UN’s budget. True or false?

Answer: False. These are the UN’s three objectives, but the UN spends less than 3% of its total budget in promoting and protecting human rights. UN Member States are reluctant to increase funding for human rights work at the UN.

2. The human rights record of every UN Member State – even the most powerful – is regularly reviewed in public UN meetings.

Answer: True. In 2007 the UN Human Rights Council established the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and every four years every UN Member State must defend its human rights record in a public, three-hour session. Also, under treaties states ratify, they must regularly appear before UN monitoring bodies (the “treaty bodies”) to answer questions regarding their compliance with treaty norms.

3. Since its founding in 1945, the United Nations has always scrutinised the human rights record of its Member States.

Answer: False. Although the UN Charter including the “promotion of human rights” as a key objective of the organisation, for its first 40 years UN human rights bodies rarely criticized the record of Member States. Only with the creation of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 1994, was there a UN body explicitly mandated to speak out about human rights abuses in any Member State.

4. Countries with very poor human rights records are not permitted to run for election to sit on the UN Human Rights Council.

Answer: False. The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) is composed of 47 states, who are elected to serve for a fixed term. Although nominated states are encouraged to make pledges regarding human rights to get elected, there is no firm rule excluding repressive states. Although some say the result is a “rogues’ gallery”, it is hard to imagine clear criteria for excluding some states. Others argue it would be pointless to only include democracies on the HRC.

5. Because of the growing power and influence of authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes like China and Russia, UN human rights bodies are far less active than they were a decade ago.

Answer: False. It’s true that on many human rights issues there is less consensus among UN Member States than during the immediate post-Cold War period. However, the UN remains very active in this area, creating new investigative mechanisms, new international standards, and generally expanding its human rights work.