An independent analysis of the High-Level Segment of the Human Rights Council The High-Level Segment of the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council, held from February 27 to March 3 2023, saw the active participation of more than 130 world leaders, including three heads or deputy heads of State, eight heads or deputy heads of government, and 117 ministers …
In the powerful words of the global environmental icon, Professor Wangari Maathai , ‘[t]here comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness so that she stops threatening its life-support system.’ The twin resolutions by the UN Human Rights Council (resolution 48/13 , adopted on 8 October 2021) and the UN General Assembly (UNGA) (resolution 76/300 , adopted on …
A message from the 17th President of the Human Rights Council, H.E. Ambassador Václav Bálek (Czech Republic) The most ratified human rights treaty in the world, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, stipulates that adulthood begins at the age of eighteen. During the Czech Presidency, the Human Rights Council enters its 17th year. Therefore, in the spirit of the …
In a newly released report, Human Rights and the Security Council: A Relationship in Need of Thoughtful, Creative and Constant Cultivation , published by the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights @JBI_HumanRights, its author, Joanna Weschler, argues that despite the difficult political dynamics at present, the Security Council still has an impressive range of tools, working methods and practices at its disposal that – if used creatively and with ongoing attention – can …
Since 2017, Georgia has tabled resolutions under agenda item 10 of the Human Rights Council with the aim of increasing international scrutiny of the human rights situation in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, occupied by Russia since 1991-1993. Today, however, OHCHR reporting mandated through those resolutions, as well as Council debates held in response to the reports, …
Free speech absolutists have not been having it their own way recently. A decade ago normative interpretations of freedom of expression under international human rights law and under relevant resolutions of the Human Rights Council were fairly finely balanced between the ‘anything goes’ ideology espoused by the United States (US) as well as by American human rights lawyers and experts …
‘We’re on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator’ warned UN Secretary General, António Guterres, at the opening of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on 7 November 2022. Guterres presented a grim dichotomy: ‘humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish. It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact – or a Collective Suicide Pact.’ COP27 was the first …
On Thursday 24 November 2022, the Human Rights Council convened a special session to address ‘the deteriorating human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially with respect to women and children’. The Special Session was requested via an official letter dated 11 November signed by H.E. Katharina Stasch, Permanent Representative of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United Nations …
Following the Human Rights Council and General Assembly resolutions recognising the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment (R2E), adopted in 2021 and 2022 respectively ( HRC/RES/48/13 and A/RES/76/300 ), it is time to consider appropriate next steps in advancing the legal recognition, implementation, and monitoring of this right. With the above in mind, on 18 October the Permanent Mission of …
On 11 October 2022, the UN General Assembly (GA) in New York convened to elect new members of the Human Rights Council for the term 2023-2025. As soon as the votes were cast and members elected, diplomats and civil society representatives, as always, began to ask themselves whether the newly composed Council (which will sit from 1 January next year) …
