July 2010: The United Nations and Human Rights

Editor's introduction: The United Nations and Human Rights

Articles under review:

“Another human-rights irony at the U.N.” by Anne Applebaum. The Washington Post. May 4, 2010.

“UN elects rights violators to Human Rights Council” by Edith M. Lederer. Associated Press. May 13, 2010.

The recent annual election for rotating membership on the United Nations Human Rights Council drew international attention on the issue of the institution's effectiveness in promoting universal respect for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. This year, the UN General Assembly voted to seat the United States on the council for the first time since its creation in 2006, soon after President Obama decided to re-join the organization. Simultaneously, other countries accused of human rights violations (including Libya, Angola, and Malaysia) also won seats in the UN body. Iran had previously withdrawn from the race after facing strong global opposition to its severe human rights abuses during the violent crackdown on peaceful protests following last year's presidential election. The composition of the newly elected UN Human Rights Council was once again at the center of international controversy.

The two articles under review, “Another Human-Rights Irony at the U.N.” by Anne Applebaum and “UN Elects Rights Violators to Human Rights Council” by Edith Lederer, set forth some of the major criticism faced by the Council and its predecessor, the Human Rights Commission. These include loose membership criteria, states with poor human rights records exploiting the institution for their own political advantage, and double standards in the selection of which states are to be subject to scrutiny. As Applebaum points out in her article, “authoritarian regimes have long battled to join the council and its predecessor organizations, the better to prevent any outsiders from investigating their own governments.”

Critics of the Human Rights Council see these as good reasons to discredit its effectiveness; our panelists counter that there are sufficient reasons for engaging in further institutional building. Three areas were emphasized by our contributors as arenas in which a serious debate about reforming the Human Rights Council must be grounded.

First, the United Nations as an intergovernmental organization is based on inclusiveness: the almost universal membership of today’s world states in a system that is built on dialogue among a wide range of international regimes. The process inside the UN system is therefore in a constant state of political flux as negotiation occurs among different stakeholders. Landman argues that even a “suboptimal” set of outcomes from the Human Rights Council does not negate its capacity to foster reform through collective action.

Second, the founding principle of inclusiveness at the UN is at the heart of the debate regarding membership in the Council. Setting standards based on the cultural and political values of a so-called “club of liberal democracies” could foster further political exclusion, and the result might be detrimental to the very people whom the system intends to protect. Equal treatment and inclusiveness are an integral component of the debate to reform human rights institutions. As Cardenas points out, “Pressuring states to elect Council members on the basis of human rights performance is surely sensible (…) as is encouraging competitive and transparent Council elections. But these challenges do not justify critics’ overwhelming focus on the question of membership.”

Third, the Human Rights Council has made some achievements since its establishment four years ago. Due to the new electoral system—a direct vote from the General Assembly—along with international pressures, countries with egregious human rights abuses such as Sudan and Iran have been kept off the Council. Also, the new system of universal periodic review targets the issue of double standards by subjecting all states to international scrutiny.

These issues and others are considered in this month’s Roundtable.

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Perpetrators in Their Midst

by David Akerson, University of Denver

"But perhaps the tension surrounding the membership of human rights institutions is constructive. Egregious violators like Iran are excluded through appropriate political pressure. Other violations run a gauntlet of criticism that may have long term effects, much like that directed against the apartheid regime in South Africa. The fact that violators seek admission to human rights bodies in order to thwart investigations directed at them is itself significant."

The two articles, “Another Human-Rights Irony at the U.N.” by Anne Applebaum and “UN Elects Rights Violators to Human Rights Council” by Edith Lederer, both set forth the problems encountered by the UN Human Rights Council and its predecessor, the Human Rights Commission. Namely, that member states with notorious human rights records will exploit the Council to their political advantage. As Applebaum points out in her article, “authoritarian regimes have long battled to join the council...the better to prevent any outsiders from investigating their own governments.”

Of course, this is not a problem unique to the Human Rights Council within the United Nations regime. It is emblematic of the United Nations as a whole. Recall that Rwanda sat as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council during the Rwandan genocide. As the Security Council deliberated on what actions it should or should not take in response to the unfolding genocide, Rwanda sat at the table cordially participating in the debate. No Security Council members demanded that Rwanda be removed, nor did any even object to its presence. And Rwanda was delighted to take advantage of the situation to gather direct intelligence on the Security Council machinations.

But perhaps the tension surrounding the membership of human rights institutions is constructive. Egregious violators like Iran are excluded through appropriate political pressure. Other violations run a gauntlet of criticism that may have long term effects, much like that directed against the apartheid regime in South Africa. The fact that violators seek admission to human rights bodies in order to thwart investigations directed at them is itself significant. First, seeking to preclude a human rights investigation is at least a tacit acknowledgment that human rights are legitimate. This is a tangible concession in that many of these same rogue states are not signatories of the principal human rights treaties. Secondly, it is also an acknowledgment of the growing influence of human rights investigations and reports, historically dismissed as soft law I am not advocating that Libya be admitted to the Human Rights Council, but Switzerland and Sweden can’t fill every slot on the Council every term. When the occasional Libya candidacy occurs, I can hope that at least it will ultimately have some subliminal effect on Libya.

It was Martin Luther King who said that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Perhaps these machinations around the human rights bodies are only the slightest bend of the universal arc. But I do believe they bend toward justice.

Visiting Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Prosecutor at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, South African Lawyers for Human Rights, President Commission for the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident.

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Overcoming History and Human Rights at the UN

by Sonia Cardenas, Trinity College

"An exclusionary Human Rights Council would almost certainly be counter-productive in the long term. It would propagate a Western-centric view of human rights governance as arrogant and politically biased, as an extension of empire. It would also perpetuate a misguidedly essentialist view of political regimes and their human rights practices."

Criticism is most useful when it imagines viable alternatives. This is why the most recent wave of outrage over the elections to the UN Human Rights Council seems counter-productive. Yes, egregious human rights violators have been elected to the Council. Yes, Iran was kept off the Council in exchange for a seat on the women’s rights commission. And, yes, the elections were uncontested, with regional blocs putting forth the same number of candidates as vacancies. These facts have led observers to describe the body as a farce, as all pretense, and to decry US participation in the Council.

For many critics, the bane of all Council problems is the election of so many non-democratic, rights-abusive members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which skews attention to human rights violations by Israel. I have already addressed in a related piece (“The Myth of Membership”) why changing the Council’s composition is only likely to trade one set of problems for another. But pinning all of the Council’s challenges on its membership also overlooks a more fundamental point: membership on the Council is premised on regional representation, itself the product of history and cross-cultural contestation.

Representation in international organizations is always a reflection of power, and regionalism has been a preferred mode of representation in international human rights governance—thus the extensive role played by regional regimes. Regionalism, while imperfect, affords two key advantages: it gives post-colonial states of the global South more meaningful representation relative to their economic and military power, and it provides states suspicious of Western motives with an opportunity to engage in dialogue and participate in human rights governance.

To disregard these historical fault lines, without offering a more radical reformulation, is entirely unproductive. Would it be better to transform the Council into a club of democratic rights-protective states, as some critics envisage? Where would member states draw the line between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” human rights practices? Would slaughtering a few dozen people in the midst of a political conflict, remote from Western capitals, be labeled unacceptable, while the mundane degradation of millions of people living in poverty or on the margins of Western democratic societies be deemed tolerable? History and theory tell us that exclusionary policies are always risky and rarely sustainable.

An exclusionary Human Rights Council would almost certainly be counter-productive in the long term. It would propagate a Western-centric view of human rights governance as arrogant and politically biased, as an extension of empire. It would also perpetuate a misguidedly essentialist view of political regimes and their human rights practices. If the study of international institutions teaches us anything, it is that participation in multilateral organizations can create mutual gains, changing the calculus and sometimes even interests of states. The Obama administration recognized these possibilities when it joined the Human Rights Council despite the organization’s weaknesses. Indeed, all states could benefit from Council membership, as long as pressure to protect human rights is ongoing—just as all human rights reforms depend partly on the political will to sustain moral and material pressures for change.

The current debate about the Human Rights Council is bogged down in a futile cycle of accusation and defensiveness. Pressuring states to elect Council members on the basis of human rights performance is surely sensible (it worked in Iran’s recent bid for membership), as is encouraging competitive and transparent Council elections. But these challenges do not justify critics’ overwhelming focus on the question of membership. Any serious debate about reforming the Human Rights Council must be grounded in the historical realities of political representation. Procedural questions—not membership issues—should be the new locus of reform.

Sonia Cardenas is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Human Rights Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. She is the author of numerous publications, including Conflict and Compliance: State Responses to International Human Rights Pressure (2007), Human Rights in Latin America: A Politics of Terror and Hope (2009), and Chains of Justice: The Global Rise of National Human Rights Institutions (forthcoming), all from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

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All Politics are Suboptimal

by Todd Landman, University of Essex

"The inherently political nature of the UN means that many of the observed outcomes of its internal procedures will be suboptimal. But to dismiss the entire institution as meaningless or irrelevant misses an important opportunity for rights-protective regimes to use their collective power to reform from within."

Despite its intentions and founding principles, the United Nations is fundamentally a political organization and therefore subject to the machinations of states as they seek to maximize their self interest, protect their reputations, and advance their power. The UN Security Council itself is a product of World War II and reflects a settlement from the end of the war that many perceive as highly inappropriate to the balance of power and global realities of the world today. Wrapped around the political construction of the UN is a social construction of ideals and norms that have sought to transcend state interest and promote human dignity through development, security, and human rights. For some, the social construction is merely a veneer that masks state interest and is used like any other tool of statecraft. For others, it is real and powerful in both shaping and reflecting the agenda of the “international community.” The UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the various UN treaties on human rights, and the Millennium Development Goals provide a particular moral compass for state action that is ultimately centred on the promotion and protection of human dignity. But the route to that protection is fraught with political difficulties.

For more than sixty years, the UN has sought to promote and protect human rights in the world though a series of weak institutions with very little capacity for enforcement of these ideals. There is not a moral litmus test to be a UN member, and thus any formal body that the UN creates will be a significant entry point for states to pursue their own interests. These states include those that have a good record of protecting human rights and those that do not. The reform of the Commission has meant that there are qualifications for entry into the Council, but the proposed slate of candidate countries and the absence of real competition, as the piece by Lederer notes, has resulted in electing to the Council a set of “unqualified” states, such as Libya, Angola, and Malaysia.

In playing its own game with the UN, the United States under the Bush administration chose not to support the creation of the Council, sending a strong signal that it was not a serious institution for human rights. Of course, there is the irony that that very signal was sent by a state that had circumvented the Geneva Conventions in its detention of “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo as part of its larger effort in the “War on Terror.” The Obama administration has decided to play the game differently, preferring to be in the “tent” seeking reform of the institution, rather than outside the tent condemning it. And by being in the tent, the US has been able to forge a coalition that, through the extension of inducements and pressure, has been able to block the candidacy of Iran for the Council. The intersection of realism and idealism in the Iran example is telling: the US and other Western powers block a country that is a serial violator of human rights, but has also been accused of developing nuclear weapons capacity.

I believe that Applebaum draws a fallacious conclusion in her Washington Post editorial in using the example of Iran having become a member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women as an indication that nothing has changed with respect to state manipulation of the UN. In contrast, I would argue that the US and other countries worried about the human rights practices of particular countries should continue to work as they did to block Iran (and other human rights violators) from the Council and other UN institutions. The inherently political nature of the UN means that many of the observed outcomes of its internal procedures will be suboptimal. But to dismiss the entire institution as meaningless or irrelevant misses an important opportunity for rights-protective regimes to use their collective power to reform from within. If the Council membership can be contested through “behind-the-scenes” efforts, then membership of other bodies can be contested as well, where the incremental advance of standards, however they are achieved, can be secured. A pragmatic approach to reforming the UN can draw on state power in ways that promote the founding ideals of the institution.

Todd Landman is Professor of Government and Director of the Institute for Democracy and Conflict Resolution at the University of Essex. His most recent publications include Measuring Human Rights (Routledge 2009), Human Rights, Volumes I-IV (Sage 2009), and the Handbook of Comparative Politics (Sage 2008). He carries out numerous international consultancies in the area of development, democracy, and human rights. http://www.todd-landman.com/

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Human Rights Abusers, the Human Rights Council, and the UN

by James Pattison, University of Manchester

“(…) the Council was probably never likely to overcome fully the problems that beset the Commission. This is because the worries over double standards, membership by states with poor human rights records, and the influence of the major powers run much deeper. They are at the center of the whole project of the UN, which is founded on inclusiveness: the UN brings together virtually all the states in the world, allowing and encouraging debate, diplomacy, and exchange between widely differing regimes. (…) This inclusiveness comes at a cost: frequent selectivity in decision-making and dominance by power politics."

The predecessor to the Human Rights Council, the Commission on Human Rights, had several notable failings. These included double standards in the selection of which states were to be subject to scrutiny, membership of the Commission by states notable for their egregious human rights records, and the shielding of the P5 members of the Security Council and their allies from criticism. The Human Rights Council, it was hoped, would avoid these flaws and, in doing so, push human rights further up the UN agenda. For instance, the General Assembly Resolution A/RES/60/251, which set up the Council, claimed that the Council’s work “shall be guided by the principles of universality, impartiality, objectivity and non-selectivity, constructive international dialogue and cooperation, with a view to enhancing the promotion and protection of all human rights”.

It is clear that the Human Rights Council does not live up to the heady ambitions that some had at its formation. As the articles by Anne Applebaum and Edith Lederer show, the Council, like its predecessor, is still subject to allegations of double standards and of allowing membership by human rights-violating states (such as the recent election of Libya to the Council). Indeed, the Council has been heavily criticized for largely ignoring several major international crises. It has also been rebuked by both Amnesty International (in its recent annual report, The State of the World’s Human Rights ) and Human Rights Watch for its paralysis over the situation in Sri Lanka.

However, the Council was probably never likely to overcome fully the problems that beset the Commission. This is because the worries over double standards, membership by states with poor human rights records, and the influence of the major powers run much deeper. They are at the center of the whole project of the UN, which is founded on inclusiveness: the UN brings together virtually all the states in the world, allowing and encouraging debate, diplomacy, and exchange between widely differing regimes. It also brings in the major powers (a notable failing, of course, of the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations), allowing them membership on the Security Council. This inclusiveness comes at a cost: frequent selectivity in decision-making and dominance by power politics.

Put in this context, the achievements that the Human Rights Council has made since its establishment in 2006 to address the problems faced by the Commission seem much greater. In regard to membership, some of the worst violators of human rights, such as Belarus and Iran, have been denied seats on the Council.In regard to double standards,the Council has been holding states to account with its Universal Periodic Review mechanism. Under this scheme, the human rights records of all 192 member states, from Albania through to Zimbabwe, are reviewed every four years by members of the Council, including the most powerful states that have previously been shielded from (or blocked) criticism by UN institutions.

The peer review of the UK’s human rights record by, among others, Algeria, Egypt, Russia, and Sri Lanka—hardly states well known for their human rights advocacy—was, I think, surprisingly fair. The review hardly hit the headlines in the United Kingdom, and there is little likelihood that the UK’s failure to live up to the particular recommendations of the Council will be followed up with measures to pressurize the UK into meeting these recommendations. However, the very fact that states are engaged in such a procedure at least gets them thinking and talking in human rights terms, and, more generally, the mechanism is remarkable in its universal scope. Moreover, if the various International Relations scholars who highlight the importance to states of being perceived as good international citizens are indeed correct, this peer review mechanism may have, in fact, some impact on states. As individuals, we never like to be criticized by our peers; some of us will inevitably deny or ignore such criticism, but others may be influenced to take what has been said into account. If the same is also true of states, then the Human Rights Council may, in the end, have a significant impact on the promotion of human rights worldwide.

Dr James Pattison is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester. His research interests concern the moral issues raised when using military force abroad, including humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect, and the increased use of private military companies. His PhD on humanitarian intervention was awarded the Sir Ernest Barker Prize for Best Dissertation in Political Theory by the Political Studies Association in 2008. He has recently completed the book, Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Who Should Intervene?, which has just been published by Oxford University Press (Spring 2010). He has also published various articles on the ethics of force, including for Ethics and International Affairs, International Theory, the Journal of Military Ethics, the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, the Journal of International Political Theory, the International Journal of Human Rights, and the Journal of Social Philosophy. Before joining Manchester, he was a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of the West of England, Bristol (from Sept 07-09). He has also spent time as a Research Affiliate at New York University and he was a temporary lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University.

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