2016 is a landmark year for the UN human rights system. Looking back, the UN is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the two International Human Rights Covenants, and the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Human Rights Council. Looking forward, the international community is beginning to wrestle with future challenges such as how to promote and protect the enjoyment …
…or at least, it did. In the early 1950s, as diplomats in New York sat down to negotiate what would become the two international human rights covenants, Syria’s delegation to the General Assembly’s Third Committee was in the vanguard of efforts to arm the UN’s human rights machinery with stronger implementation mechanisms to ‘pierce the veil of national sovereignty’* that …
Many observers are expecting the 25th session of the Human Rights Council, which opened this week, to be a particularly bumpy ride. The combination of latent ill-feeling leftover from the General Assembly’s 2013 decision to only partially accept the Council’s annual report, significant changes to the Council’s composition, and the presence of a number of difficult and sensitive issues on …
