The UN Human Rights Council

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The technological progress and globalization processes spurred the faster development of the international relations. At the same time, in separate countries, it provoked many problems, such as hunger, and the issues that impact the entire world, for example, global warming. There are various governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that try to solve these dilemmas; however, since most problems continue to exist, it is important to provide the functioning of the united institutional body that would be able to support the needs and ideas of human rights within the frames of international relations. The respective institution nowadays is Human Rights Council. This paper is an attempt to review Ramcharan’s book (2013) that is destined to become the leading text of the Human Rights Council (HRC), and will be essential for all people who are concerned with the future of international relations matters, the position and destiny of the international organizations, and human rights.

The people who drafted the Charter of the United Nations (UN) realized the fact that they could achieve its mission if they take into consideration three important components, which are the human rights, peace, and development. These elements, which are discussed in the given Charter, relate to each other, as the human rights protection is the main prerequisite of peace in the world. Moreover, it is the leading initiator of the development and equality among all the nations. Despite the fact that the UN has attempted to achieve those three components to a certain extent, they failed to reach the aspirations to fulfill the Charter completely, especially in the part where they analyzed human rights violations and the ways to protect and promote them. At the same time, its legislative activities correspond to a high level.

The global movements that work in the area of human rights expect from the HRC to act as the main initiator of the human rights protection with the Security Council of the UN. This book provides the arguments explaining why the HRC has almost failed to meet those expectations based on the policy perspectives of this international institution. Despite the council’s “politicality”, it should conduct its work within the area beyond the human rights section. Thus, the author presents six areas of protection, on which the HRC should concentrate their main scope of performance (Ramcharan, 2013).

The first pillar relates to the treaties that are connected with the human rights. The author mentions that they should include the International Criminal Court Statute and the UN Charter as well as consider and place direct normative obligations on the national governments (Ramcharan, 2013). The second pillar relates to the presence of the national protection systems. That means that there should be both effective and adequate systematic mechanisms of national protection in every country. They are currently present in several places, but not everywhere.

As the HRC carries central responsibilities in the human rights protection, the other pillars represent the institutions that should work under the Charter of the United Nations. They include the UN HRC procedures, the question of human rights in the cooperation with the human rights NGOs that usually document and publicize the corresponding violations; and the last pillar refers to the duties of the International Criminal Tribunals and criminal courts.

This book is the review of the HRC during the first five years of its existence. There are ten thematic chapters within the aforementioned topic and the respective conclusions. Chapter 1 discusses the council’s role and mandate. It concerns mainly the stress on the development of international cooperation and dialogue with the human rights area that is stated in the resolution of the General Assembly. There are ideas that the author uses willingly terms “promotion” and “cooperation” within the frames of the human rights area, which also hints on sophistry notes of the documents. During its work, the Human Rights Commission had developed the mechanisms of the human rights protection and its role based on practical experience. The chapter also discusses the resolution of the General Assembly to establish council protection principles that became weak.

The author elaborates procedural and institutional components of the HRC in Chapter 2. It refers to the discussion of both the ways, in which it is composed as a body, and the methods to select the members of the HRC with the detailed review of its main procedural rules. Another main issue mentioned in the chapter is the allocation of the Asian and African groups that amounted to 26 from the 47 seats available. The main idea relates to the weak position of the government role and various situations and conflicts connected with the human rights violations recorded in the countries representing those two world regions.

Moreover, their ambassadors represent the countries in the HRC in Geneva that band together in order to avoid the development of the discussion regarding the violations of human rights situations under critic. The majority that is currently present in the council does no intend to change its ideas based on its advantage in number. The author discusses the importance to ensure that the HRC overcome the aforementioned situation in order to have the potential to change the direction of the human rights violations. The chapter provides the ideas, which will help the council to overcome the given problem. They may achieve this by discussing the implications and matters necessary to approach the HRC in order to ensure that it is the main UN body of the United Nations.

In Chapter 3, the author discusses the limitations and merits of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). There is a rule stating that each country’s government should submit a 20-page report every four years, which should describe the efforts of each country, their ability to work as well their corresponding achievements in the area of human rights protection. Such report, according to the HRC procedure, is further discussed in the working groups and later during a plenary session. The prepared suggestions of each country may be either accepted or rejected by the government’s review.

Chapter 4 discusses the legislative role of the HRC’s with a special highlight of the work executed in the area of the human rights protection. The author states that the council was not much successful in the process of new conventions and declarations adoption. In addition, this chapter describes the legislative work of the HRC that is in the process of development. Moreover, this chapter provides the information about the development of new standards within the council’s work methods.

Chapter 5 relates to the discussion of the HRC’s educational and promotional role. It is significant to note that the council has prepared a draft in a form of the proposed declaration regarding the education in the area of human rights. In addition, this chapter demonstrates the importance of the given initiative exploring the possibilities of the council’s promotional role with the special stress on its high value and role in further perspective.

Chapter 6 discusses the preventive role of the HRC. It reveals information about the functioning of Resolution 60/251, which provides the council with a mandate that helps preventing violations of the human rights. Despite the fact that there were some resolutions concerning prevention aspects adopted by the body, most of them that relate to the given topic were not functioning properly. Thus, Chapter 6 describes the ideas that could stimulate the development of the HRC within the frames of its preventive role.

The author provides elaboration of special procedures in Chapter 7, which discuss the fact-finding matters of the council’s work. The groups that are involved in this business and the HRC reporters perform one of the most important jobs of the body. Despite the fact that they were generally working under pressure, a code of conduct for mandate-holders was established for them. Chapter 7 is the description of work of those units dealing with special procedures, whose role is the problems’ identification within the scope of HRC.

Chapter 8 discusses the council’s responsibility to protect human rights, which results in the main institution’s criticisms. The author views this conceptual meaning of protection through the HRC’s role and mandate within the frames of corresponding responsibility. He provides an opportunity to review this philosophical concept by spurring the idea on the possibilities of the council to act while being responsible to protect the humans.

The author discusses the issue of HRC’s Advisory Committee in Chapter 9. This advisory body has the respective experts, who work on different issues, including the preparation of a declaration draft about the education matters within the area of the human rights. Consequently, this committee accomplished some targets, which are elaborated in more details in the chapter, including general overview of the committee and its overall experience.

Chapter 10 of the book provides information about the general role of NGOs that act in the area of human rights within the framework of the council’s performance. These organizations have strict time limits provided to them by the HRC, which is a solid constraint to continue working in order to implement their missions and goals. The chapter discusses how different NGOs managed to overcome the challenges of their work, how they were able to engage into the council’s activities and ensures that it works with them more actively.

The concluding section of the book both summarizes the general research findings and provides the recommendations to HRC regarding the policy matters that could potentially strengthen the institution. It should have real interest in taking responsibility for the human rights protection, which was initially endorsed by the General Assembly. In addition, the author mentions that it should act as a body that respects values conscience. Moreover, they should implement this task in practice and noticeable to everybody.

In order to reach those goals, there should be a strong cooperation and constructive dialogue within the organization and in cooperation with NGOs. Furthermore, the author arrived at the conclusion that the council should act in order to promote and develop human rights protection, democracy, the rule of law, and equal prosperity of every human in the entire world. In addition, it should be a leader and example of exceptional address to challenges and problems that impact the protection of humans, especially in the countries that are in the process of their development.

The conclusions section of the book provides the detailed analysis showing the level of HRC’s various achievements that the council was able to implement within the mandate. The main conclusion is that it was unable to act successfully. is the author described that this leading world institution lacks general approach, which is necessary to deal with the different situations regarding human rights violations. The detailed analysis of its balance sheet includes various elements regarding specific issues that are essential to consider while drawing the overall picture of the HRC activities.

Analyzing the promotion matters of the council, it is important to mention the absence of promotional strategy as well as lack of any precise statement about the matter. Thus, the main conclusion states that it is urgent to fill in this blank of work. Despite the fact that the HRC uses some of the promotional elements, they are still insufficient, considering the issue at the global level. The reason is that the strategy is the main leading initiator and indicator of stability in any organization attempting to reach the targeted results in any sector and in any research topic (Lega, Prenestini, & Calciolari, 2014; Machado, 2014). Moreover, it is the main driver of success and innovation in any company (Ikeda & Marshall, 2016). Consequently, the HRC should not behave conscious while considering its promotional strategies. It has to combine them with innovative elements in order to be a leading body of the human rights protection in future.

Non-discrimination factor that includes the questions of language, religion, sex, race and other elements is another issue that was analyzed within the frames of the HRC activities. It is possible to conclude that despite the fact that the area of work is broad, the council was unable to explore the topic to the full extent. Thus, various critics argue about the activities of the HRC and its scope of work worldwide; they concluded that the headquarters tend to target some countries more than the others while implementing their activities in various states (Ramcharan, 2013).

The author conducted review of the state duties benchmark within the frames of the council’s role in order to insist on the governments’ duties aimed at protecting and promoting human rights matters in the entire world. The given idea raises the following issue: dialogue and cooperation of the HRC. Despite the fact that this notion should be the most progressive scope of work of the council, it still faced much criticism. The main deficiency of the council is that it acts differently in cooperation with various countries, such as in the case of Israel described in the book. The HRC intends to lead the dialogue and cooperate with the countries, the governments of which directly perpetrate human rights violations and criminal behavior.

Despite the fact that the council engaged in various thematic issues, such as climate change resolutions adoption or human rights matters, its final solutions completely depended on the initiatives of particular governments and were much politicized. At the same time, even such attempts to discuss and review thematic issues require more systematic way of their corresponding implementation. The task of the HRC is to conduct the assessment of the states with the human rights worldwide annually. Moreover, it is important to divide the research results of the obtained data in the corresponding topics and debate them accordingly with a special implementation within particular research areas.

The questions of the promoting education on the human rights topics should first start with the draft declaration of the human rights for training and education. At the same time, it is important to consider this issue in other areas within the frames of different norms’ development. The work concluded that the council has implemented some substantial duties in the aforementioned area and completed some new conventions. This fact is the most positive result on its balance sheet.

The other analyzed items include mainstreaming, the position and activities of the Universal Periodic Review based on its reports, prevention measures taken by the HRC worldwide, its responses to gross violations. The other issues include emergency sessions’ analysis that aim at coping with the international concern situations, special procedures, recommendations on protection and promotion, as well as advice of experts and its contribution to different partnering organizations. There is a report stating that the HRC failed to implement most of these items successfully.

To conclude, this book is essential source for better understanding of the main international body institution that deals with the protection and promotion of the human rights. On the one hand, it is vital to see the scope of work executed by the council; however, it is unusual to read that such an important body does not reach the main strategic tasks and does not work equally in all countries of the world in order to promote further human right protection while diminishing violence.

References

Ikeda, K., & Marshall, A. (2016). How successful organizations drive innovation. Strategy & Leadership, 44(3), 9-19.

Lega, F., Prenestini, A., & Calciolari, S. (2014). How organizational culture of top management matters in the healthcare sector. European Journal of Public Health, 24(suppl_2).

Machado, F. (2014). Strategy as practice and organizational routines: A start point to innovate. International Journal of Innovation, 2(2), 128-141.

Ramcharan, B. G. (2013). The UN Human Rights Council. Florence: Taylor and Francis.