On 12 October 2018, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will hold elections for 18 seats on the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) for a three-year term starting on 1 January 2019. All five UN regional groups have clean slates – in which the number of candidates is equal to the number of vacant seats. [1] These clean slates turn the election into …
It is now widely recognised that corruption negatively affects the enjoyment of civil and political rights, as well as economic, social and cultural rights. Corruption not only has a negative impact on the ability of States to implement their treaty-based human rights obligations, but it also directly affects the population of such countries. This concern was raised several times by …
La nueva Alta Comisionada de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos, Michelle Bachelet, inició su mandato el 10 de septiembre con un discurso inaugural ante el Consejo de Derechos Humanos (al comienzo de su 39ª sesión). Al igual que en todos los discursos inaugurales de anteriores Altos(as) Comisionados(as), los Estados, las ONG y los medios de comunicación observaron detenidamente …
The new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, marked the start of her tenure on 10th September with an inaugural address to the Human Rights Council (at the start of its 39th session). As with all inaugural speeches by new High Commissioners, the statement was closely watched by States, NGOs and the media for clues as to Ms Bachelet’s …
Como argumenta Suzanne Nossel en su excelente artículo recientemente publicado en la revista Foreign Policy (‘ El trabajo del jefe de derechos humanos de la ONU no es lo que piensas ‘, 9 de agosto), el regocijo general entre los defensores de los derechos humanos por el nombramiento de Michelle Bachelet como la próxima Alta Comisionada para los Derechos Humanos debería dar paso rápidamente a “una reevaluación exhaustiva del papel de la Alta Comisionada y …
The 38th session of the Human Rights Council (HRC38) in June saw the largest drop in the number of adopted resolutions since the body’s establishment in 2006. This came against a backdrop of almost uninterrupted growth in the Council’s output over the past decade. Beyond providing an interesting talking point for Council delegates, the decrease (from 35 texts adopted one …
As Suzanne Nossel argues in her excellent recent article in Foreign Policy magazine (‘ The job of UN human rights chief isn’t what you think ,’ 9 August), the general rejoicing among human rights advocates at the appointment of Michelle Bachelet as the next High Commissioner for Human Rights, should quickly give way to ‘a searching reassessment of the role of the High Commissioner and a commitment to steps that will …
In March 2018, a coalition of some 60 NGOs, led by the Universal Rights Group, the UN Association of the UK, and Human Rights House Foundation, sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, encouraging him to enhance the selection procedure for the new High Commissioner for Human Rights. The sponsors of the letter argued that the process used …
The Spanish Supreme Court has established that the views expressed by UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies in individual complaints are binding on the State. The Court ordered Spain to pay €600,000 in compensation to Ángela González for the responsibility of its authorities in relation to the death of her daughter. Her daughter was murdered by her father in an unsupervised …
The US’s announcement that it is leaving the UN Human Rights Council should not surprise anyone, since the Trump administration has long made clear its disdain for many parts of the United Nations. But the damage that the decision is likely to cause could nonetheless topple an increasingly wobbly house of cards. When the Human Rights Council was created in 2006, the US (then under the …
