URG Insights
27 March urgent debate on killing of schoolchildren in Iran ‘reflective of major power shifts at the Human Rights Council’
by the URG team
One relative constant over the twenty-year history of the Human Rights Council has been that the body’s mandate to ‘address situations of violations of human rights, including gross and systematic violations’ (paragraph 3 of GA resolution 60/251) has largely been implemented in one direction only. Developed or Western States have sought to realise the mandate and developing countries, especially geopolitical opponents of the West, have – almost always - been its object. While there have been some exceptions to this rule, such as item 4 resolutions on Russia, and item 7 resolutions on Israel, it has broadly held since the…
