June 26, 2020 At the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, there is a plaque on the wall of the Garden Room that reads: 25 April – 26 June 1945 In this room met the Consultants of forty-two national organizations assigned to the United States Delegation at the Conference on International Organizations in which the United Nations Charter was drafted. Their …
In 1999, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan famously drew attention to what he saw as a core feature of the late twentieth century – a reinterpretation of State sovereignty. As he put it: ‘When we read the Charter today, we are more than ever conscious that its aim is to protect individual human beings, not to protect those who abuse them.’ …
El lunes 24 de febrero, el primer día de la 43ª sesión del Consejo de Derechos Humanos (CDH43) , el Secretario General de la ONU, António Guterres, lanzó un nuevo “Llamado a la acción por los derechos humanos” . Rumores de un “anuncio importante” del Secretario General circulaban desde fines del año pasado, y el propio Guterres los confirmó en un discurso de apertura ante la Asamblea General el 22 de enero. En esa ocasión, el Secretario …
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 …
UN efforts over the past thirty years to shift its approach to crises and conflicts from reaction to prevention have largely failed for two main reasons, according to a new report by the Universal Rights Group (URG) think tank. First, because it is far easier for world governments to invest political and financial capital in responding to humanitarian disasters (especially …
This project will allow URG to continue its pioneering work on UN support for and follow-up to the domestic implementation of universal human rights norms, including via reform of the Council’s work under agenda item 10 and the Oslo+ process; and how to link this with the Secretary-General’s ongoing reform of the UN’s security pillar and development system. Regarding the …
‘Hate speech is a challenge from which no country is immune,’ stated Adama Dieng, Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide at the launch event of the UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech . The system-wide strategy was launched amid a backdrop of surging levels of xenophobia, racism, and overall intolerance throughout the world. This trend has been amplified by social media and information communication technologies, which have …
This post is the third in a series of blogs produced by the URG-NYC team to take stock of the implementation of the UN reforms, which were adopted in the past 18 months. This post covers reforms to the peace and security pillar. Objectives All of the reforms are intended, to varying degrees, to modernise the UN, to streamline and …
This post is the second in a series of blogs produced by the URG-NYC team to take stock of the implementation of the UN reforms, which were adopted in the past 18 months, and provides an update on perhaps the most opaque series of reforms: changes to the UN management system. Objectives All of the reforms are intended, to varying …
On 31 May 2018, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 72/279 , accepting measures for change along the lines of the Secretary General’s recommendations and setting in motion one of the most comprehensive reforms of the UN Development System (UNDS) to date. This post provides an update on these reforms and is the first in a series of blogs produced …
