Wednesday 19th March 2014, Geneva The United Nations’ (UN) independent human rights experts – otherwise known as ‘Special Procedures’ – are considered by many to be, in the words of then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the ‘crown jewel’ of the international human rights system. From their first appearance in 1967 when the Commission on Human Rights established an Ad Hoc …
Report on the 25th Session of the Human Rights Council
The Human Rights Council concluded its twenty-fifth session on Friday 28rd March 2014 after taking action on forty-two texts. Its high-level segment saw the participation of around 94 dignitaries, including the President of Tunisia and Vice President of Colombia. Key-note statements were delivered by the United Nations Secretary General, the President of the United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations High …
URG report on the 25th regular session of the Human Rights Council
(3 – 28 March 2014) The Human Rights Council concluded its twenty-fifth session on Friday 28rd March 2014 after taking action on forty-two texts. Its high-level segment saw the participation of around 94 dignitaries, including the President of Tunisia and Vice President of Colombia. Key-note statements were delivered by the United Nations Secretary General, the President of the United Nations General Assembly, …
Building the ‘Cooperative Council’: Recalling the Universal Spirit of 1946-48
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 …
Human Rights and the Post 2015 Development Agenda
Despite the many achievements of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the MDG framework has been deficient in some important respects, not least in terms of how it deals with equity and the protection of human rights (civil and political, as well as economic, social and cultural). This deficiency is important because without human rights, sustainable development cannot be realized. That …
The President of the Human Rights Council looks ahead to 2014
2014 will be another important and eventful year for the Human Rights Council. Seen against the long history of human rights at the United Nations, the Council is still a young body, and yet it has achieved a remarkable amount in its relatively short life. Everyone who has contributed to the body’s work since 2006, whether representatives of States, NGOs, independent …
New Human Rights Think Tank Opens its Doors
20th January 2014, Geneva The Universal Rights Group (URG), a new think tank focused on international human rights policy, was officially launched on 20 January 2014 in the presence of over one hundred and twenty human rights policy-makers, including around fifty Permanent Representatives and ambassadors, senior UN officials from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International …
Post 2015 Development Agenda – Global Governance and the Right to Food
In 2000, the U.N. Millennium Summit declared that halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger between 1990 and 2015 is a key Millennium Development Goal. Also in 2000, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights appointed a Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food in order to “respond fully to the necessity for an integrated and coordinated approach in …
Strengthening policy through dialogue
So much depends on the Human Rights Council and the people who work there.As the world’s pre-eminent human rights body, the Council sits atop one of the three thematic pillars of the UN system. And yet talk to most diplomats, the people who draft and negotiate resolutions, vote on vital human rights questions, establish new treaties and new protection mechanisms, …