60 Years of the UN and Human Rights

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Monday October 24, 2005 11:44 by Fiona de Londras fionadelondras at gmail dot com 085 7361536

Can the UN protect human rights?

Today we celebrate the 60th birthday of the United Nations but to what extent can we celebrate the United Nations’ capacity to enforce the human rights standards they have successfully put in place in international law since the 1940s?

Today we celebrate the 60th birthday of the United Nations but to what extent can we celebrate the United Nations’ capacity to enforce the human rights standards they have successfully put in place in international law since the 1940s?

The Security Council has been completely inept at ensuring respect for human rights notwithstanding the fact that Articles 55 and 56 of the Charter of the UN require all organs of the UN to promote human rights and despite the fact that the Council itself is vested with the responsibility to maintain “international peace and security”. Because of the veto of the five permanent members however (US, UK, France, China, Russia) international peace and security more or less translates to ‘our’ peace and security with the Council moving more often than not on issues that threaten any of the major powers but proving themselves completely useless in terms of questions that don’t touch those countries directly. Just compare the Rwandan genocide with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 – the Security Council resolutions mandated a troop of international forces to go to the Saudi border, carry out Desert Storm and Iraq was out of Kuwait and no longer threatening Saudi Arabia within seven months of the original invasion. In Rwanda, Romeo Dallaire was left aidless in Rwanda to watch a genocide happen before his hands while his force was continuously depleted and the Security Council failed to take heed of what was, for the five great powers, an insignificant civil war and massacre somewhere in Africa.

The Commission on Human Rights (a body under the supervision of ECOSOC) has traditionally been a hot-bed of political manoeuvring. The balance of power within the Commission has changed a number of times over the years and its rights focus has experienced corresponding changes. Originally it was dominated by Western states giving rise to a focus on civil and political rights, it was then dominated by ‘Third World’ states resulting in a shift to focus on racial discrimination and post-colonialism and, most recently (since 1980), the balance of power has again favoured the Western agenda.

The deeply politicised nature of the Commission has certainly contributed to its declining reputation and its declining effectiveness: a nation with sufficient numbers of strategic allies on the Commission can be more or less guaranteed immunity from the rights mechanisms discussed above. As part of his programme to reform the United Nations the Secretary General, Kofi Annan, released In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All in March 2005. In this report the Secretary General reflects on the efficiency of the Commission of Human Rights and concludes, rightly, that while the Commission has been effective in giving “the international community a human rights framework” and focusing attention on important issues of rights and development its “capacity to perform its tasks has been increasingly undermined by its declining credibility and professionalism…[particularly where] States have sought membership of the Commission not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticise others”. In order to remedy this “credibility deficit” the Secretary General proposes the creation of a smaller Human Rights Council that would give human rights a position of prominence in the workings of the organisation proportionate to its prominence in the Charter.

Certainly the Secretary General is proposing innovative means of increasing the UN’s capacity to give human rights the same priority within the organisation as security and development but I don’t hold out huge hopes of this being effective. Governments will never allow human rights to become the most important thing on the agenda: they don’t see any positive pay-off from it; it doesn’t increase their power internationally or at home and therefore there’s no logical reason for states to engage in rights discourses for rights’ sake. The challenge for the UN in the future in the name of human rights and, indeed, in an effort to ensure that the UN is still in existence in another sixty years, is to come up with a means of showing states that compliance with international human rights law brings with it a growth of power and security domestically and internationally; it’s to change mindsets.

Good luck UN – and happy birthday.