The Council blew out the candles on its 10th birthday cake in June. As delegates working from different perspectives, who were there at the birth, who saw the Council take its first baby steps, and who have seen it grow and develop, here’s a shared view on how far we’ve come.
Ten years ago there was optimism that the newborn Human Rights Council would be a major step forward, in how the UN dealt with the world’s biggest human rights challenges. The guiding spirit of the Council, as set out in its founding resolution, was one of cooperation and there were some significant changes: the Council would meet more frequently than the previous annual sessions of the Commission on Human Rights, allowing it to react more promptly; the new Universal Periodic Review would mean that every country faced constructive scrutiny of its human rights record, rather than just a select few; Council Membership would be much more fairly distributed among the UN’s different regions, thereby providing greater legitimacy; and the Council could meet in urgent Special Sessions to respond to human rights crises – a key objective for Kofi Annan in proposing the Council.
The initial signs were good and a delicate balancing act by the Council’s first President secured a hard-won agreement on what the Council would look like. But the optimism didn’t last long and the Council’s early years were hampered by disagreement and polarisation. States from all regions were quick to unite within geographic or political groupings, rather than addressing each issue on its own merits. This enabled hard-line positions to prevail, at the expense of dialogue and cooperation and damaged the Council’s reputation. Although there were some important early achievements, especially the new Declaration on Indigenous Peoples and the Convention on Enforced Disappearances, these were already in the pipeline long before the Council.
The Universal Periodic Review was certainly a major success, but was used by some to avoid responding to human rights crises in individual countries. And when Special Sessions did occur, often these fell far short of what was needed to respond, particularly in the cases of Darfur, the DRC and Sri Lanka. The Council felt stuck in a slow fall to the bottom and by the time the Council carried out its 5 year review in 2011, the Council was facing increasing criticism from civil society and from many of its own members for failing to live up to its mandate.
But then things started to turn around and the Council became much better at building agreement. It was able to move from decades of division on the concept of ‘defamation of religions’ to a strong resolution on combating religious intolerance, which was supported by all. It responded much more actively to crises in Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, and Syria. And it became a forum where new issues were judged on their merits, and not on the basis of who had proposed them.
These positive steps were not down to any fundamental change in the Council’s architecture, but rather to individuals from different States taking matters into their own hands and working together. Paragraph 4 of the General Assembly resolution, which created the Council, emphasises the need for “constructive dialogue and cooperation” to improve human rights. In this spirit, and under the name of the Article 4 Group, for the last 5 years delegates from all regions have met informally but regularly to address some of the Council’s biggest challenges. For the most part involvement in this informal group has been a personal commitment, which transcends belonging to a State and a regional group.
This has had a positive impact on how work is done at the Council and there’s little doubt that the Council’s second 5 years have been a major improvement on the first 5. A much greater range of issues and countries have been addressed at the Council, with new topics emerging like child early and forced marriage, civil society space, and corruption and human rights. While important long-standing issues have stayed at the Council, most resolutions are no longer annual repeats of what has been said many times before. And the power of the old regional and political blocs has become much diminished in favour of many cross-regional initiatives.
There is still much that needs to improve. Domestic implementation of all Council resolutions, whether voted or consensual, is patchy at best; human rights defenders and others in civil society from too many States are still not able to come to the Council without fear that they will face reprisals upon their return home; not all States cooperate with the Council’s mechanisms and many refuse to let Special Rapporteurs into their country; and in recent years ‘No Action Motions’ have been used maliciously to prevent debate on some key human rights issues.
But the trajectory is definitely positive. The Council is only as good as its members, and its members are only as good as the delegates working for them. The more that individuals are personally committed to the promotion and protection of human rights, the more they appreciate that this commitment can make a difference, and the more we bridge division to advance human rights, the stronger the Council will become.
Bob Last, Deputy Head of Political and Human Rights at the UK Mission to the UN in Geneva
Gisele Fernandez Ludlow, Second Secretary at the Permanent Mission of Mexico to the UN in Geneva
Bakary Banmba Junior, Conseiller pour les questions Paix, sécurité et droits de l’Homme Représentation permanente de l’Organisation internationale de la Francophonie auprès des Nations Unies à Genève
Image: A general view of participants during opening day of the 32nd session of the Human Right Council, 13 June 2016, UN Photo / Jean-Marc Ferré, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
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