Ten years after its establishment ... the Human Rights Council is a mechanism without teeth ... and is governed by political and diplomatic relations

Ten years after its establishment ...  Human Rights Council

A mechanism without teeth .. and governed by political and diplomatic relations

A position paper issued by the Policy Analysis Unit of the Maat Foundation

On March 15, 2006, that is, ten years ago, the United Nations General Assembly decided, by a majority of 170 of its members, that the system for the protection of global human rights needs a new mechanism that avoids the defects and shortcomings of the existing mechanisms at the time, headed by the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Human Rights Committee emanating from the Council And then the Assembly decided to adopt Resolution No. A / RES / 60/251). ), Judge establishing the Human Rights Council.

According to its founding decision, the Council consists of 47 members elected by the United Nations General Assembly by majority by secret ballot to represent the regional distribution of the various regions of the world, as each of the African group represents the Asian group with 13 members each, and the Eastern European group with six seats, and the Latin American group With five seats, three seats for the Caribbean Islands, and seven seats for Western European and other countries.

Now, a full decade after the Council was established, the international system and human rights defenders in the world must pause a little to evaluate the harvest of those ten years, and look with a neutral and careful eye whether the Council represented a real addition to human rights protection mechanisms, and was able to fulfill justifications Or did the Council reproduce the shortcomings that weakened the previous mechanisms and undermined the hopes placed on them to make the world more respectful of human rights?

Regional quotas empty the selection criteria of their content

One of the most important reasons for the United Nations to establish the Human Rights Council is the nature of the formation of the previous Human Rights Committee. The committee was elected by the majority of the members of the Economic and Social Council (27 votes out of a total of 54 votes), which enabled many countries that do not enjoy enough respect. For human rights, access to the membership of the Committee, hence the United Nations approved new rules for membership of the Council, where members are elected by an absolute majority of the number of members of the General Assembly of the United Nations (96 votes).

Article 9 of the decision to establish the Council also set objective conditions that must be met in the candidate country for membership, and the most prominent of these conditions were as follows: -

1- They have clear contributions to the promotion and protection of human rights

2- Fulfill their obligations towards the promotion of human rights.

3- Cooperation with human rights procedures

4- To cooperate fully with the council

5- Their acceptance of the universal periodic review during their membership period

Article 8 also gave the General Assembly the right to suspend the membership of a member by a two-thirds majority of the members present, in the event that the member state committed gross and systematic violations of human rights.

Although these conditions appear to be objective in theory, and consistent with the objectives of the Council, in practice, ten years later, these conditions have been completely emptied of their content, and perhaps the most prominent evidence for this is the following: -

1- Some regional groups used to present candidates equal to the number of seats allocated to them, and thus the members of the General Assembly did not have the opportunity to choose, and the competition rules were abolished.

2- Many countries have reached membership of the Council that violate human rights, whether on their territories or outside their territories.

3- Countries that have not ratified many human rights conventions have reached the council’s membership, and their record of cooperation with special procedures is extremely negative.

4- The United Nations General Assembly has never used its right to suspend the membership of any state in the Council.

Based on that, it can be said that the Human Rights Council was unable to impose the conditions of its membership, and the rules of regional quotas overpowered the commitment to these conditions, especially since the decision to establish the Council did not specify clear mechanisms to verify the applicability of these standards and make them gelatinous and easily evading them.

The powers of the Council ... a mechanism without teeth

The fifth article of the decision to establish the council specifies the package of tasks, competencies and powers assigned, and the tools that it can use to achieve the purpose behind its establishment, and these tasks were as follows: -

1- Providing advice and technical assistance with the approval of the countries to which that assistance is directed.

2- Act as a forum for dialogue on human rights issues

3- Make recommendations to the United Nations General Assembly

4- Encouraging states to fulfill their human rights obligations

5- Conducting the universal periodic review of states

6- Immediate response to violations and support for victims

7- Working with non-governmental organizations

8- Carry out the tasks of the Human Rights Committee related to the special procedures and the Human Rights Commission.

9- Presenting an annual report to the United Nations General Assembly.

It is clear from the text of the resolution and the powers that the Council has an advisory role, and does not have sufficient power to take action in the event that human rights are violated, as it ultimately submits its recommendations to the United Nations General Assembly, and it has no alternative path for dealing with countries that violate human rights, and it may be a case. A country like Israel, which was condemned by the Council for its violations of the rights of the citizens of the Gaza Strip, is an example of this. The famous Goldstone report adopted by the Council did not lead to anything.

The weakness of the effectiveness of the Human Rights Council and its tools is evident in the restrictions imposed on the clients ’exercise of procedures specific to their tasks, as a number of international political or legislative obstacles hinder their work. The holders of substantive mandates cannot enter any country without the prior consent of this state, and it does not result from their refusal. Any obligations or sanctions by the international community and the Human Rights Council, and some countries refuse to cooperate with state officials responsible for monitoring the human rights situation in certain countries (Israel, for example, refuses to cooperate with the rapporteur on monitoring the human rights situation in the occupied territories).

In addition, the Council has not played a tangible role over the past ten years in providing technical and technical support to countries in the field of respecting human rights, in addition to the fact that the Council does not have sufficient resources to fulfill this important role, and it does not have adequate mechanisms to help it fulfill this role. All this turned the council into just a world forum without claws or fangs

Politics and diplomacy overshadow the council’s human rights role

The most prominent disadvantage of the Human Rights Committee was its submission to political and diplomatic considerations at the expense of the human rights role, and it was expected that the Council would overcome this point, but that did not happen, and the issue of human rights remained “hostage” by clear politicization processes, and instead of turning the Human Rights Council It has become a professional international human rights body whose strength is based on its affiliation with the United Nations system, transformed into a political body that is subject to diplomatic alignment and the interests of states, especially the major countries with political, economic and military influence.

The "politicization" of the council’s work is mainly due to the system of distributing regions and regional quotas, but there are also other factors that enhance this process of politicization, perhaps the most prominent of which is the nature of diplomatic and economic relations and commercial and military interests between countries.

These interests not only often lead to member states turning a blind eye to human rights violations in certain countries during the review of their human rights file, or discussion of the reports of mandate-holders regarding them, but also sometimes leading to a “member state” adopting a human rights discourse that is beyond the truth and is disproportionately prejudiced. With the reality against a particular country, it has hostilities or disputes with the influential or influential member state.

The process of politicization has led the Council to be very late and lax in dealing with issues closely related to human rights, and perhaps the issue of terrorism is one of those issues, despite the escalating pace of violence in the world for years, which the Middle East region has been plagued with its fire, so the Council did not discuss it on a large scale and did not go Except recently for the adoption of a decision on it, and until now it has not sought to develop a set of mechanisms and tools to deal with this issue (such as developing a binding agreement, for example). This is mainly due to the interference of political considerations in the matter, and the relationship of some influential countries with groups and organizations involved in practicing terrorism and violence.

The Human Rights Council and civil society ... missing good intentions and effectiveness

Among the positives established by the Human Rights Council is strengthening the role and participation of community organizations in analyzing the reality of human rights in different countries of the world, and trying to establish channels to ensure the participation and representation of these organizations in the activities and activities of the Council. The most prominent of these channels are as follows: -

1- Submit reports and affidavits to the High Commissioner during the UPR process

2- Holding parallel activities and events at the council’s headquarters

3- Participating in oral interventions during the session approving the state report

These channels - despite their importance - appear to be insufficient on the one hand, and subject to misuse on the other hand, as the participation of organizations is only by providing information, and this information is often ignored or used according to the political positions of the Council member states towards the state under periodic review, and some organizations It may play a positive or negative role in the review process by obliterating certain facts, or promoting incorrect information about the human rights situation in a country, and therefore the reports and testimonies submitted by civil society are not suitable alone as a framework for effective and equitable participation of these organizations in the Council's mechanisms.

Oral interventions are a good mechanism to a large extent, but it is important to provide guarantees not to misuse them, and to provide more time to ensure the representation of all views on them, but in all cases these interventions do not have a fundamental impact on the decisions of the Council and whether or not they are approved for a state report. What .

and what ?

The issue of human rights in the world, as it is a cross-border humanitarian issue, and as expressing higher values related to the fate of humanity itself, needs more effort to protect it, and the United Nations Human Rights Council is - despite shortcomings - a good and important step, but the time context and the outcomes of the experiment drive Towards the need to develop the Council, develop and activate its mechanisms, and the following advice may be a step in this direction: -

1- Adopting a package of in-depth studies for the comprehensive, objective and scientific evaluation of the Human Rights Council, its performance and mechanisms over the past ten years, and adopting a comprehensive vision for its reform in line with the goals and limits of the role of the United Nations, and the United Nations Secretariat must push in this direction.

2- Developing the council’s system of special mechanisms and releasing them from requesting the prior approval of states to visit mandate-holders, or at least making the state’s admission compulsory while giving it the choice regarding setting the time within a specific time period.

3- Reconsidering the method of forming the Council, while laying out detailed rules to verify the applicability of membership criteria to the candidate countries.

4- Providing adequate resources for the Council to play its role in providing technical support to deserving countries

5- Enhancing the role of civil society organizations and their participation in the Council’s work, while establishing mechanisms to verify the objectivity, fairness and reliability of information related to these participations.

 

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