There has been considerable attention paid, over recent years, to the relationship between the Human Rights Council and the Third Committee of the General Assembly. Do these two key human rights bodies form a coherent whole, with each playing a clearly-defined and logical role in the overall UN human rights system? Or is the relationship more characterised by incoherence, duplication …
Monday 10th December 2018, Geneva, New York and Katowice Two concurrent news stories, seemingly unrelated. First, the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a moment in history reflecting humanity’s ambition for a more just and equal world. Second, world leaders gathered in Katowice, Poland, to finalise the rules for implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. …
Dos noticias concurrentes, aparentemente no relacionadas. En primer lugar, el 70 aniversario de la Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos, un momento de la historia que refleja la ambición de la humanidad de un mundo más justo e igualitario. Segundo, los líderes mundiales reunidos en Katowice, Polonia, para finalizar las reglas para la implementación del Acuerdo de París de 2015 sobre el cambio climático. De hecho, estos dos eventos están …
On Monday 3 December, H.E Mr Vojislav Šuc presided over his last meeting as the twelfth President of the UN Human Rights Council. The purpose of the meeting was twofold. Firstly, to formally elect the next President of the Council and his Bureau. In this regard, the Council elected Senegal’s Permanent Representative, H.E. Mr Coly Seck, as its thirteenth President. …
Quick summary The Third Committee of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly (GA) was held 2 October 2018 through 20 November 2018, at the UN Secretariat in New York. This Third Committee featured presentations by a number of senior UN officials, including H.E. Ms. Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner for Human Rights; Mr. Andrew Gilmour, Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) for human …
The ‘implementation agenda’ called for in the lead up to the next review of the Human Rights Council in 2021 is a lofty yet largely unrealized ambition. On February 28 this year, almost three years on from its conception, a High Level Panel convened at the Human Rights Council to discuss how this agenda might work in practice, suggesting that it has yet to achieve meaningful change. [1] The emergence …
El asesinato extrajudicial del columnista del Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi en el consulado de Arabia Saudita en Turquía, y la reacción internacional al mismo, bien podrían representar un momento decisivo en la evolución de los sistemas de responsabilidad internacional por violaciones graves de derechos humanos. Específicamente, la respuesta de Estados Unidos a dicho asesinato está siendo moldeada (o, desde la …
The extrajudicial killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey, and the international reaction thereto, could well represent a defining moment in the evolution of systems of international accountability for serious human rights violations. In particular, the US response to the killing is being shaped (or, from the perspective of President Trump, perhaps dictated) …
Thursday, 15th November 2018, New York On 3 November 2018 the Human Rights Council President presented the Report of the Human Rights Council A/73/53 to the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly; on 13 November 2018, the Third Committee tabled the Africa Group co-sponsored Resolution A/C.3/73/L.56 on the Report of the Human Rights Council. Both the Council President’s presentation and interactive …
After four years of discussions in and around the Human Rights Council about improving the body’s efficiency, discussions that have culminated, over the past ten months, in intensive Bureau-led negotiations to secure agreement on a meaningful (though still rather modest) set of reform measures; States are now entering the final stretch, with the contours of a deal clearly discernible in …
