Citizens for Global Solutions

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS | Commission on Human Rights

UN REPORT Suggestions for Reforming chr Contain Some Good Ideas But Also could Create New Problems

Today, a blue-ribbon UN panel released its long awaited report on reforming the UN for the 21st Century. Entitled “A more secure world: Our shared responsibility,” the report suggests a host of reforms designed to update the UN to face the threats and challenges posed by today’s world: poverty, infectious diseases, armed conflicts (both between states and within states), weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and organized international crime rings.

As part of its recommendations, the report suggests making a number of changes to the United Nations’ Commission on Human Rights (CHR). The CHR is the foremost UN body on human rights. It sets the UN agenda for human rights, investigates complaints of human rights abuses, monitors compliance with existing human rights norms and proposes new human rights standards. For a detailed analysis of the Commission on Human Rights, click here.

However, in recent years, the Commission has often been accused of doing more to avoid investigating human rights abuses than call attention to them. In particular, some of the countries with the worst human rights records have actively sought positions on the Commission so that they could thwart investigations into their countries’ human rights compliance. This “race to the bottom” has damaged the CHR’s reputation. The report clearly recognizes this problem.

Standard-setting to reinforce human rights cannot be performed by States that lack a demonstrated commitment to their promotion and protection. We are concerned that in recent years States have sought membership of the Commission not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others. The Commission cannot be credible if it is seen to be maintaining double standards in addressing human rights concerns.

However, the report’s recommendation on membership may not be enough to remedy the situation. The panel explicitly rejects using “membership criteria” to limit membership on the Commission to those countries that have a demonstrated commitment to human rights on the grounds that it would “further politiciz[e] the issue.” Instead, the panel recommends expanding the Commission from the current 53 members to include every state in the United Nations.

This recommendation has the benefit of ensuring that countries interested in limiting the role of the CHR would no longer be able to exclude countries with better human rights records. However, it introduces a new problem. Even at 53 members, the CHR has regularly been accused of being a lethargic body that spends too much time organizing meetings and too little time actually meeting to explore human rights issues. Quadrupling the membership to include every UN member would just exacerbate the problem. The recommendation runs the risk of actually decreasing the effectiveness of the Commission. To read more about the problems with the current membership of the CHR, click here.

Perhaps to counteract the problem inherent in adding more members, the report suggests a number of other reforms to the CHR, including:

1. A requirement that all delegations to the Commission name a “prominent and experienced human rights figure as head of their delegation”;

2. The creation of an “advisory council” of independent experts appointed jointly by the Secretary-General of the UN and the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights that would offer advice to the Commission and “carry out some of the current mandates dealing with research, standard-setting and definitions;

3. The commission of “an annual report on the situation of human rights worldwide” to be written by the High Commissioner on Human Rights; and

4. Making the CHR a “Council” equal to the Economic and Social Council, rather than subordinate to it.

Some of these suggestions are better than others and much would depend on how they were implemented. The recommendation that all delegations name a prominent human rights figure sounds good, but the report suggests no criteria for how such people should be chosen, or who would get to decide whether any given person is prominent enough. It is likely that either countries will continue to appoint whomever they choose or the process will devolve into a series of disputes about whose candidates are prominent enough. The first possibility is the most likely.

The suggestion of the creation of an advisory council is likely to be similarly ineffective. There are two problems. First, much would depend on the quality of the experts appointed. However, the bigger problem is that there is nothing to prevent the Commission from simply ignoring any “advice” it does not like. Unless the advisory council has some specific power to influence the Commission’s work, it risks being marginalized.

On the other hand, the idea of an annual report on human rights worldwide is a very good one. It is particularly important that the High Commissioner, not the Commission, be the author of the report. The previous High Commissioners have been well-respected experts in the field of human rights, and any report authored by them is likely to be well-written and authoritative. If the Commission were given the task of writing the report, it would probably get bogged down in the same political fights that have hampered the effectiveness of the CHR in recent years.

Finally, the recommendation that the CHR be made a body equal to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) could work well, depending on how it is implemented. The most important thing would be to make sure that the new “Human Rights Council” has primary responsibility for human rights issues. If the Economic and Social Council were allowed to retain responsibility for human rights, it would create a situation of dueling committees each claiming to speak to human rights issues. Unfortunately, it may not be easy to get ECOSOC to give up its role in human rights.

As the report recognizes, the “decision-making on international economic matters, particularly in the areas of finance and trade, has long left the United Nations and no amount of institutional reform will bring it back.” Consequently, ECOSOC would be left with “social” issues other than human rights. There would probably be significant institutional opposition to such a diminishment of ECOSOC’s role.

Ultimately, the recommendations for reforming the Commission on Human Rights are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. But this may be all we can hope for in the near future. The panel felt constrained to offer only advice that it believed had a chance of being accepted.

In approaching the issue of United Nations reform, it is as important today as it was in 1945 to combine power with principle. Recommendations that ignore underlying power realities will be doomed to failure or irrelevance, but recommendations that simply reflect raw distributions of power and make no effort to bolster international principles are unlikely to gain the widespread adherence required to shift international behaviour.

These recommendations may not be the best solution to the problems facing the CHR, but they are the best solution the panel believed had a chance of being adopted. Click here to read Citizens for Global Solutions’ suggestions for reforming the Commission on Human Rights.