Opinions have already begun forming about Volker Türk in the short time since the announcement of his appointment last week as the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. However, in the absence of a public competition, there was little opportunity to learn about Türk. He is also not well-known outside of the UN (and had few followers on twitter …
In February 2018, I published a blog on the early departure of the previous High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. The blog responded to David Petrasek’s article in OpenGlobaRights entitled ‘Another one bites the dust’ (8 February 2018). The article attempted to look past Zeid’s stated reasons for leaving his post (in effect, that the worldwide retreat from human …
On April 21, 2022, Ambassador Federico Villegas of Argentina, the President of the Human Rights Council, gave a lecture at the New School in downtown New York, on the place of human rights in the UN system. Although he touched on a variety of themes, a key point was that human rights is integral to – and should be better …
Challenges for the coming year As Permanent Representative of Argentina, I am grateful and honoured for having been elected to preside over the Human Rights Council for 2022. 2021 was very challenging, but my predecessor, Ambassador Khan, guided us through the year and kept the Council functioning during an unprecedented pandemic. The year ahead will also present particular challenges for the Council, …
From 23-25 October, members of the Security Council carried out country missions to Mali and Niger, under the auspices of the Kenyan presidency of the body. In Mali, they met with members of the Transitional Government, including the Transitional President and Prime Minister, signatory armed groups, representatives of civil society, the Special Representative of the Secretary‑General for Mali, and representatives …
When UN member State diplomats sat down, in 2005, to discuss the size, shape, prerogatives and responsibilities of the new Human Rights Council, including how the new body would be different from its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, it is fair to say that the issues of elections and membership were at the forefront of their minds. The Commission …
As argued in the Universal Rights Group’s end of session report , the recently concluded 48th session of the Human Rights Council (HRC48) was one of the most acrimonious gatherings in the fifteen-year history of the Council, with heightened contemporary geopolitical tensions spilling over into, and in many ways ‘capturing,’ the critical wider work of the UN’s main human rights body. Much of the …
I was very surprised, roughly a year ago, to find out that several UN Special Procedures mandate-holders (independent UN human rights experts), were receiving substantial financial contributions from governments, and even from private foundations, and that many of those contributions are made without any kind of formal financial oversight or transparency. I therefore decided to look further into this issue, …
Diplomatic tensions between Canada and China have been on the rise for a number of years, particularly since the arrest in 2018 of Huawei CEO Meng Wanzhou by the Canadian authorities on behalf of the US. The Chinese response was swift and brutal – two Canadians were detained in China for ‘endangering national security.’ In late June, those tensions spilled …
On 9 June, the President of the Human Rights Council, H.E. Ambassador Nazhat Khan (Fiji), convened an informal exchange on the General Assembly’s review of the Council’s status, due to be conducted between 2021 and 2026. This was the first time Geneva delegations had had the opportunity to consider the ‘2021-2026 review’ since the summer of 2019, when it had …
