Catalysts for Change: How the U.N.'s Independent Experts Promote Human Rights - Softcover

Piccone, Ted

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815721927 ISBN 13: 9780815721925

Verlag: Brookings Institution Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

" Catalysts for Change examines the strengths and weaknesses of one of the United Nations' most important human rights mechanisms—the collection of independent experts known as special procedures—as they negotiate the rocky terrain where rights meet reality. These independent experts serve as the eyes and ears of the UN human rights system. Despite their prolific work as experts and advocates, however, there has been no empirical study of their impact at the national level—until now. This book provides concrete evidence of why the system works and ways it can be improved."

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Ted Piccone, a senior fellow and deputy director for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, brings to this groundbreaking study over two decades of experience as a human rights lawyer, researcher, and senior adviser at the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Pentagon. He is a coeditor of Shifting the Balance: Obama and the Americas and The Obama Administration and the Americas: Agenda for Change, both published by Brookings.

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Catalysts for CHANGE

How the UN's Independent Experts Promote Human RightsBy TED PICCONE

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS

Copyright © 2012 THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8157-2192-5

Contents

Chapter One

Who Are the UN's Independent Human Rights Experts?

We are the via media between the victim and the Human Rights Council and indeed the world. We place the protection of those in need as high among our priorities and pursue a victim-oriented perspective. We have the enormous task of analysing the human rights situations, making relevant recommendations and striving for justice for the victims, actual and threatened. —Miloon Kothari, former special rapporteur for the right to adequate housi\ng

The United Nations system of independent human rights experts is a unique and effective mechanism that allows independent, periodic, on-the-ground scrutiny of a country's record of respect for human rights. Since the appointment by the Commission on Human Rights of an ad hoc working group to inquire into the situation of human rights in Southern Africa in 1967, this mechanism has grown to become one of the UN's most important instruments for promotion of universal human rights norms at the national and international level. Under continuous attack by some member states for intruding on what they consider their internal affairs, states nonetheless decided to preserve them largely intact when the Commission on Human Rights was replaced by the Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2006. Since then the council has created several new independent-expert mandates, a further reaffirmation of the importance of this mechanism for the promotion and protection of human rights. Mandates are established to monitor and report on either a country-specific scenario—such as human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran—or the status of a thematic issue worldwide—such as freedom of expression, torture, or the right to adequate housing. Several thematic mandates, as they are known, also cover group rights, such as the situation of migrant workers or the indigenous population. Nearly all of them carry out country visits and make public reports on their findings regarding respect for rights in specific countries as an essential element of their work.

As of December 2011, thirty-five thematic mandates exist, an increase of 67 percent since 2000; ten country-specific mandates are in operation, a decline of 40 percent over the same period. This shift reflects two important trends: the creation of new mandates dealing with economic, social, and cultural rights of particular concern to developing countries; and successful efforts by some states, particularly those with bad human rights records, to avoid the "naming and shaming" tactics associated with country-specific mandates in favor of thematic mandates and the peer review and technical assistance aspects of a new mechanism known as the universal periodic review. This latter trend was tempered in March 2011 when the new Human Rights Council established its first country-specific monitor: a special rapporteur to address the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This country-specific mandate was followed by the establishment of the rapporteurs on Côte d'Ivoire and Syria later in 2011. These are positive signals that the council is willing to use independent experts to address new country-specific issues on top of the prodigious reporting that already exists on thematic human rights issues in specific countries.

The experts appointed by the HRC to serve as special procedures are independent of governments, serve in their personal capacities, and carry out their mandates on a volunteer basis. Under new reforms adopted in 2006, special procedures may serve no more than six years total (thematic mandate holders typically serve two terms of three years, and country-specific mandate holders typically serve for one-year renewable terms). Their authority is derived from their professional qualifications to address specific human rights situations objectively as well as the political mandate they receive from the Human Rights Council. Governments rely on them to gather facts, identify problems, and make recommendations. One of their greatest assets is a profound sense of commitment to the cause of human rights, which, combined with subject matter expertise, political skills, and good judgment, represents a dynamic force for catalyzing attention and action to protect human rights.

In June 2007 the Human Rights Council agreed on a new system of appointing its independent experts that moves away from the close control formerly exercised by the president of the council and the high commissioner for human rights toward greater transparency and consultation with multiple stakeholders. Candidates may be nominated by governments, nongovernmental organizations, other UN bodies, or individuals. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) prepares a public list of eligible candidates. Criteria for appointment include human rights expertise and experience in the field of the mandate, independence, impartiality, personal integrity, and objectivity. A consultative group composed of diplomats from each regional group reviews the candidates and makes recommendations to the president of the council, who continues a process of consultation before presenting the list to the HRC for final approval. This method has decreased the level of backroom dealing and manipulation that was evident under the old system and continues to generate, on the whole, an impressive and diverse group of candidates from every region. Some states, however, continue to demand that their favorite candidates be chosen, as was seen in June 2010 when the president of the council acquiesced to demands from the Africa and Asia bloc for particular appointees.

The main reference points for the independent experts' examination of a state's human rights record range broadly from the general provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other internationally recognized human rights standards to the specific terms of their mandates from the HRC. They may rely on particular instruments of "hard" treaty law as well as "soft" law of relevant declarations, resolutions, and guiding principles. In this regard, they have several important advantages over treaty bodies: they are not restricted to the text of any one convention; they may examine any UN member state, not just those states that have ratified a treaty; they may make in situ visits to any country in the world (assuming the government concerned grants permission); and they may receive and act on individual complaints without prior exhaustion of domestic remedies. This combination of features gives them a uniquely flexible and independent role in a system otherwise dominated by governments. They operate, in the words of one researcher, in the space between universal norms and local realities, allowing them to elaborate and interpret international standards grounded in concrete situations, "to define rights in real time."

What role such a mechanism plays in engendering state cooperation to defend human rights is the central inquiry of this book. While the UN Charter sets forth every state's obligation to promote "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion" and to cooperate with the UN to achieve this objective, no specific treaty instrument binds member states to cooperate with the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Brookings Institution Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0815721927
• ISBN 13: 9780815721925
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 242
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland