Ever since the United Nations was established in 1945, victims, witnesses and civil society organisations have struggled to get it, and its principal human rights organ, now the Human Rights Council, to act for the protection of the human rights of victims of gross violations. This has been, and remains, an uphill struggle.
And yet, we must continue to strive for a stronger protection role for the United Nations and its Human Rights Council. Therein lies the importance of this new book of Professor Bertrand G. Ramcharan devoted to ‘The protection role and jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Council’. It is a timely contribution by one of the best experts in the UN system to a necessary reflection on the achievements of the Human Rights Council, fifteen years after its creation by the UN General Assembly to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights.2 The book carefully discusses how the Human Rights Council, with its strengths and weaknesses, has sought to provide a measure of protection. Implicit in the discussion is a quest to see how the Council can, in the future, expand and deepen its protection role.
It did not start in 2006. In his study, the author rightly refers to the main achievements of the United Nations, in particular with the Commission on Human Rights and its mechanisms. Step by step, in about forty years work and, sometimes hard, negotiations, the Commission and its Sub-Commission had elaborated General Principles of Law, Declarations, Conventions, treaty-monitoring bodies and Special procedures, all adopted by the Economic and Social Council (ecosoc) and the General Assembly. In its Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (vdpa), the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights (wchr),3 had confirmed this emerging world human rights system. The wchr had also paved the way to the creation of the post of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which would strongly change the role of the Secretariat of the United Nations.
The Vienna consensus was soon tested in the new challenges the UN faced in the 90s. Firstly, the end of the Cold War led to many local and regional
Secondly, after the Cold War there was one economic system only. One could not continue to ignore the existing link between economics and human rights, especially with the rapid globalization process. Widespread extreme poverty and the gaps in income distribution, both inside and between the countries, dramatically increased. Largely neglected during the Cold War, the demands of the countries from the South then resurfaced.
Finally, as the system was expanding exponentially with new tasks, programmes, entities, the United Nations was facing major challenges in decision-making, management and finance. It needed in-depth reorganisation.
It is in this context that the new UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had launched, in January 1997, an ambitious Reform of the UN.4 Together with the outcomes of several UN world conferences in the 90s (on development and environment, human rights, habitat, population, women), the Reform process led to major changes, including in the human rights machinery. Under the impulsion of Annan, High Level Groups of experts had been set-up. The Assembly endorsed most of the recommendations contained in his successive reports, such as the reorganisation of the UN Secretariat into four sectors (security; economic and social affairs; humanitarian affairs; development); the merger of UN Geneva-based human rights entities into one single Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (ohchr), led by the High Commissioner; the creations of a Senior Management Group (including with the High Commissioner for Human Rights); and of the post of Deputy Secretary-General; and, later, the strengthening of the national protection systems through the country teams and country coordinators, and the creation of UN Women.
This process had been boosted by the Millennium Summit.5 Its landmark United Nations Millennium Declaration reaffirmed the commitment to the Charter’s purposes and principles, including ‘to respect fully and uphold the Universal Declaration’; to strive for the full protection and promotion in all their countries of all the rights for all; and to achieve by the year 2015 the ‘Millennium Development Goals’ (mdgs).
Annan endorsed the views of the Panel in his famous report ‘In Larger Freedom’, submitting proposals for the September 2005 World Summit.8 He supported the creation of a Human Rights Council with a ‘peer review’ of the situation in all the members States, and affirmed: ‘Yet the Commission’s capacity to perform its tasks has been increasingly undermined by its declining credibility and professionalism. In particular, States have sought membership of the Commission not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others. As a result, a credibility deficit has developed, which casts a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole (…) If the United Nations is to meet the expectations of men and women everywhere – and indeed, if the Organization is to take the cause of human rights as seriously as those of security and development – then Member States should agree to replace the Commission on Human Rights with a smaller standing Human Rights Council’9.
Less than twenty years after these statements and after the 2005 Summit of Heads of States and Government, which endorsed this proposal, one may have difficulty to understand the reasons for such criticism of the Commission and its Sub-Commission. In fact, it mainly concerned the way the two bodies dealt
On the other hand, defenders deplored that the Commission did not act on serious cases of violations. Year after year the European Union resolution on the situation in China was defeated, as each time the Chinese Delegation successfully tabled no-action motions. A ‘Like-Minded Group’ (lmg) emerged, denouncing this ‘politicization’, this ‘partiality’, and opposing any country resolutions. Many hardliner States sought and obtained membership of the Commission to protect themselves. As a result, at the end of the 90s, most of the States, those advocating the end of country resolutions, and those deploring the lack of action on China and other hardliner States, spoke of the ‘discredited Commission’.
Fifteen years after the replacement of the Commission by the Council, it is therefore time to assess the Human Rights Council whether and how far the Council made a difference and achieved progress in the field of protection.
Herein lies the importance of this book. Obviously, on a scale of one to ten, it would be hard to assess United Nations protection at more than five. The simple fact of the matter is that there are still numerous groups suffering gross violations, or at risk of such violations, who receive little or no protection from the United Nations.
The protection of human rights is preventive protection, reactive protection, and remedial protection. To put it simply, inside the Human Rights Council there is a small measure of preventive protection. There is a fair measure of
After reading this thoughtful and well documented book the reader will, hopefully, be stimulated to consider how the protection role of the Human Rights Council can be made stronger in the future.
One of the merits of the book is its discussion, for the first time ever in the literature, of the ‘jurisprudence’ of the Human Rights Council. The idea behind this discussion is to trace how the Human Rights Council, with its strengths and weaknesses, contributes to the future normative architecture of protection in life and death areas facing humanity, such as climate change.
The Human Rights Council, notwithstanding the politicization that characterises its deliberations and decisions, nevertheless reflects the aspirations of humankind for a fairer and more just world. This normative/jurisprudential contribution of the Council is among its worthwhile contributions to international law and relations.
It is now fifty years since Professor Bertrand Ramcharan, an active Board Member of Geneva for Human Rights, entered the service of the United Nations, where he rose to perform the functions of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as Under-Secretary-General. He has been an architect of UN human rights strategy for half a century – something I have been fortunate to witness first-hand. The enhancement of the protection role of the United Nations has been a consistent theme running through his work and writings. He continues this quest in the present work, a worthwhile contribution to reflections on the role and future of the Human Rights Council.
I commend this important book to the attention of the human rights community.
Adrien-Claude Zoller
President
Geneva for Human Rights
6 January 2022
General Assembly resolution 60/251 of 15 March 2006.
wchr, held in Vienna from 14 to 25 June 1993.
See in particular the Report of the Secretary-General, ‘Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform’ (A/51/950), 14 July 1997.
Millennium Summit, held in New York from 6 to 8 September 2000.
‘A more secure world: our shared responsibility’. Document A/59/565. The Panel was chaired by Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand, the Panel was composed of Robert Badinter (France), Joâo Baena Soares (Brazil), Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway), Mary Chinery Hesse (Ghana), Gareth Evans (Australia), David Hannay (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), Enrique Iglesias (Uruguay), Amre Moussa (Egypt), Satish Nambiar (India), Sadako Ogata (Japan), Yevgeny Primakov (Russian Federation), Qian Qiqian (China), Salim Salim (United Republic of Tanzania), Nafis Sadik (Pakistan) and Brent Scowcroft (United States of America).
‘A more secure world: our shared responsibility’, paragraph 291.
‘In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all’ (A/59/2005), Report of the Secretary-General, 21 March 2005.
‘In larger freedom, paragraphs 182–183.
Commission on Human Rights, Decision 2000/109, 56th session.