Human rights analysis of high-level speeches during the general debate of the UN General Assembly In the pre-pandemic world, each fall world leaders would descend upon New York City to speak at the General Debate of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Last year, this tradition was disrupted (as so many others) by the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of migrating to Turtle …
On 9 and 10 June 2020, the Permanent Missions of Denmark and The Netherlands to the UN in Geneva, in cooperation with the Universal Rights Group (URG), convened a digital meeting of bilateral and multilateral development partners on how international cooperation could be better leveraged to support the national implementation of international human rights obligations and commitments, in particular in …
The international community has invested enormous time and energy in building the international human rights system over the past 70 years. Yet for as long as that system has existed, commentators have questioned the degree to which it is capable of, and is succeeding in, securing real-world change – i.e. demonstrable improvements in the on-the-ground enjoyment of human rights. According …
A year ago, at a Human Rights Day event in Geneva, I met two very impressive sisters, Amy and Ella Meek, 14 and 16 years old respectively. These two young climate activists go to the barricades against plastic pollution. I also met Memory Banda, a young campaigner against child marriage from Malawi and Hamangai Pataxo, an indigenous rights defender from …
The 43rd regular session of the Human Rights Council ( HRC43 ) was held in two segments, as the session had to be suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first segment took place from Monday 24 February until Friday 13 March. The 43rd session resumed on Monday 15 June and ended on Tuesday 23 June 2020. As it is the …
On Monday 24 February, the first day of the 43rd session of the Human Rights Council (HRC43), UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched a new ‘Call to action for human rights.’ Rumours of a ‘major announcement’ from the Secretary-General had been circulating since late last year, and were confirmed by Guterres himself in a keynote speech to the General Assembly on 22 January. In it, he identified four key contemporary challenges facing humanity (he called …
This post first appeared on OpenGlobalRights . In December, UNDP launched the Human Development Report 2019 . It was announced in advance that the new report would reconceptualize human development around the concept of inequality. This framing offers a more holistic take on existing injustices around the world. The report combines income and wealth inequalities with those more traditionally associated with human development such as health …
On 10 May 2019, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden and the Swedish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Sida), in cooperation with the Universal Rights Group (URG), convened a meeting of bilateral and multilateral development partners in Stockholm on how international cooperation could be better leveraged to support the national implementation of international human rights obligations and commitments. This …
As UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed stated during her address to the Council last March , ‘Human rights are an intrinsic part of sustainable development—and sustainable development is a powerful vehicle for the realisation of all human rights.’ The adoption of the 2030 Agenda in 2015 signalled a fundamental shift in the UN’s development paradigm—from one traditionally based on a flawed orthodoxy overemphasising economic growth to a broader understanding of development, which takes into account …
The SDGs are mostly aligned with human rights objectives — to emphasise this, the UN human rights mechanisms are showing a willingness to hold states accountable to their SDG commitments. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are renewing the debate on the relationship between human rights and development. In 2005, Philip Alston famously described the relationship between the Millennium Development Goals …
