The UN Security Council’s role in protecting human rights

What are the options available for protecting human rights in situations of war and crisis?

Reading: the UN Security Council and Human Rights

David Petrasek, “An evolving relationship – the UN Security Council and Human Rights”, in The Institutions of Human Rights: Developments and Practices, Gordon DiGiacomo and San Kang, eds. University of Toronto Press, forthcoming.
UN Charter, Chapters I, V, VI and VII.

UN Peace Operations and protecting human rights

When UN peacekeepers deploy to a country, they usually do so with the consent of the government and the major armed groups engaged in the fighting. These ‘consensual’ interventions do not raise the same legal and political concerns that arise where the UN might authorize troops to intervene without the government’s consent.

The United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) has about 120,000 personnel deployed in 16 current peace support operations. This includes about 85,000 troops, 13,000 police, 1800 military observers, and the remainder are civilian personnel. Virtually all UN peace operations established since 2000 include an explicit civilian protection mandate and a human rights component.

Reading

Read the following:

Explore material on UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations homepage “What is peacekeeping?
Executive Summary, pp. 1-16, and of Protecting civilians in context of UN peacekeeping operations: successes, setbacks and remaining challenges Independent study commissioned by DPKO and OCHA, United Nations, 2009.
Watch this short video on the UN Peacekeeping Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=zuy4dFSD0tY
“New UN Brigade’s Aggressive Stance in Africa Brings Success, and Risks”, New York Times, November 12, 2013

Self-assessment exercise

Go to the Human Rights Map, open the entry for Central African Republic (CAR), and read the material. Do you think the UN’s response to the human rights crisis in CAR is adequate?

Module 7