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The Future of Human Rights: A View from the United Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2014

Andrew Gilmour
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Extract

Ever since the Charter of the United Nations was signed in 1945, human rights have constituted one of its three pillars, along with peace and development. As noted in a dictum coined during the World Summit of 2005: “There can be no peace without development, no development without peace, and neither without respect for human rights.” But while progress has been made in all three domains, it is with respect to human rights that the organization's performance has experienced some of its greatest shortcomings. Not coincidentally, the human rights pillar receives only a fraction of the resources enjoyed by the other two—a mere 3 percent of the general budget.

Type
Roundtable: The Future of Human Rights
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , Summer 2014 , pp. 239 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2014 

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References

NOTES

1 See UN Secretary-General, “Report of the Independent Inquiry into the actions of the United Nations during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda,” December 16, 1999, UN document S/1999/1257; and UN General Assembly, “Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35—The fall of Srebrenica,” November 15, 1999, UN document A/54/549.

2 “Report of the Secretary-General's Internal Review Panel on United Nations action in Sri Lanka,” November 2012, paragraphs 33, 80. According to the report, throughout the final stages of the conflict, member states did not hold a single formal meeting on Sri Lanka in the Security Council, General Assembly, or Human Rights Council. In informal meetings, the Secretariat focused mainly on humanitarian situations, rarely emphasizing the responsibilities of the government, or linking actions by the government and the LTTE to obstacles to humanitarian assistance, or giving full information on the deaths of civilians.

3 UN General Assembly, “Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations,” August 21, 2000, UN document A/55/305–S/2000/809.

4 Hammarskjöld, Dag, To Speak for the World: Speeches and Statements (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2005), p. 65Google Scholar.

5 UN Security Council, “Report of the Secretary-General on the Central African Republic submitted pursuant to paragraph 22 of Security Council resolution 2121 (2013),” November 15, 2013, UN document S/2013/677, para. 55.

6 UN Security Council, Resolution 2127, December 5, 2013, UN document S/RES/2127 (2013), para. 56.

7 Joint letter by the Deputy Secretary-General and the Chair of the United Nations Development Group, Ms. Helen Clark, February 24, 2014.

8 UN General Assembly, Resolution 60/1, “2005 World Summit Outcome Document,” October 24, 2005, UN document A/RES/60/1.

9 Jennifer Welsh, “The Responsibility to Protect: Securing Individuals in a World of States” (Signature Lecture, Centre for International Governance Innovation, Waterloo, Ontario, September 25, 2013).

10 UN General Assembly, “Report of the Secretary-General, Responsibility to protect: State responsibility and prevention,” July 9, 2013, UN document A/67/929–S/2013/399, para. 15.

11 UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,” February 7, 2014, UN document A/HRC/25/63, p. 14.

12 Such as UN General Assembly, “A life of dignity for all,” July 26, 2013, UN document A/69/202.

13 Koenig, Shulamith, “Imposed ignorance is a human rights violation,” in Kozma, Julia, Müller-Funk, Ana, and Nowak, Manfred, eds., Vienna + 20: Advancing the Protection of Human Rights (Vienna: Neuer Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2014), pp. 339–52Google Scholar.

14 Shannon Kindornay, “Mainstreaming the Human Rights Based Approach into the Post-2015 Framework,” in Kozma, Müller-Funk, and Nowak, Vienna + 20, pp. 261–74.

15 Hammarberg, Thomas, “Defending Human Rights,” in Janello, Amy, and Jones, Brennon, eds., A Global Affair: An inside look at the United Nations (I. B. Tauris: New York, 1995), p. 251Google Scholar.

16 Ian Martin, “Acceptance speech - 2013 Sir Brian Urquhart Award for Distinguished Service to the United Nations” (United Nations Association, London, October 24, 2013).