Brexit, the US Presidential Election, and ‘Post-Truth’ politics at the UN: a common thread?

by Marc Limon, Executive Director of the Universal Rights Group and the URG team Beyond the Council, Blog

Friday 18th November 2016, UN headquarters, New York On 15th November Oxford English Dictionaries declared ‘post-truth’ to be its international word of the year. Defined by the dictionary as an adjective ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief,’ Oxford Dictionaries said use of the …

General Assembly

The Emerging Struggle over the Council’s Prerogatives

by Marc Limon & Toby Lamarque Blog, International human rights institutions, mechanisms and processes

It seemed innocuous enough. In December last year, the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee adopted a short resolution taking note, as per normal practice, of the annual report of the Human Rights Council, but deferring consideration of one particular Council resolution ‘in order to allow time for further consultations thereon’. This additional wording, which was subsequently endorsed by the General …