4 - The Human Rights Council

Summary

Far from resulting from a rational design, the Human Rights Council is in fact a perpetual work in progress. In terms of policymaking practices, the level of open-endedness and the role of trial and error in the institutionalization of this UN body is particularly striking. The making of the HRC is testimony to the prevalence of bricolage in global public policymaking: even its anchoring practice, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), is subject to unending revisions. In terms of value debates, this chapter shows how the consensus against the politicization of human rights, which originally led to the demise of the COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, actually hides deep cleavages over universality, equal treatment, and dialog. A lot of these debates pit the North against the South, although the lines demarcating these two camps are often blurred. Today’s HRC forms an amazing bricolage of governance practices and universal values, one characterized by constant adaptation and constructive ambiguity.