In 2005, Heads of State meeting at the UN’s World Summit resolved to create the Human Rights Council and asked the President of the General Assembly to begin negotiations to establish its mandate, functions, composition and working methods. One of the defining outcomes of those negotiations would be the decision to establish, as a central pillar of the Council’s work, …
2015 will be remembered for many important initiatives and developments, from the body’s work to support human rights in Sri Lanka to the creation of a new Special Procedures mandate on the right to privacy. This new report on ‘The Human Rights Council in 2015,’ published by the Universal Rights Group and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway as part …
The links between climate change and human rights are more widely accepted than ever before. The Human Rights Council has adopted a series of resolutions calling attention to the effects of climate change on the full enjoyment of human rights, and the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC has also recognised that ‘the adverse effects of climate change have …
In 2006, member States took a significant step towards strengthening the human rights pillar of the United Nations by establishing, with General Assembly resolution 60/251, the Human Rights Council. Since then the Council has grown significantly in confidence and stature, positioning itself as a relevant and influential political body in the multilateral arena, and has registered important achievements at both …
This policy report, prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), analyses levels of respect for human rights among businesses around the world. The policy report contains the final results of a global survey of nearly 900 CEOs, designed to understand their views, perceptions, strategies and actions in the area of human rights. The survey and the resulting EIU report aim …
The United Nations Human Rights Council (‘the Council’) was created through a decision taken by heads of states and governments during the 2005 World Summit, and codified in the outcome document thereof, General Assembly (GA) resolution 60/1. This decision was put into effect through the adoption of GA resolution 60/251 later that year, which formally established the Council’s mandate. Both …
It is almost impossible to turn on the news today without witnessing scenes of hatred, violence and intolerance perpetrated in the name of religion or belief. The march of ISIL across Syria and Iraq, with associated reports of gross and systematic violations of human rights, may be an extreme example of such hatred, but it comes against a background of …
The United Nations’ independent human rights experts – otherwise known as ‘Special Procedures’ – are considered by many to be, in the words of then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the ‘crown jewel’ of the international human rights system. From their first appearance in 1967, when the United Nations Commission on Human Rights established an Ad Hoc Working Group to inquire into the …
