Inconvenient multilateralism: the challenges of the EU as a player in the United Nations Human Rights Council: Gjovalin Macaj and Joachim A. Koops

2012 ◽  
pp. 80-95
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Human Rights Council ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Eu

Environmental and Collective Rights: Differences between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous ngo s Involved with the United Nations Human Rights Council

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Maia Hallward ◽  
Charity Butcher ◽  
Jonathan Taylor Downs ◽  
Emily Cook
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Rights Council ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Indigenous Organizations ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Environment Sustainability

Abstract Scholarship on human rights and environmental justice suggests that organizations vary in their messaging regarding outcomes related to environmental protection and sustainability, differences often found in the divide between the Global North and Global South. The literature also suggests that Indigenous organizations represent groups that traditionally focus on issues of sovereignty, while grappling with unique problems related to assimilation, cultural preservation, and oppression. This study utilizes empirical data gathered from 333 non-governmental organizations affiliated with the United Nations Human Rights Council to explore whether Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizations, which share many aspects of their mission with one another at the transnational level, differ on issues related to environment sustainability and collective identity rights. Our results indicate that Indigenous organizations take a more holistic approach in addressing the relationship between humans and the natural world, centring marginalized perspectives through restorative justice and the needs of current and future generations.

From a Stark Utopia to Everyday Utopias

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 575-606
Author(s):  
Michelle Staggs Kelsall
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Council ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Human Rights Due Diligence

This article considers the emergence of the Business and Human Rights agenda at the United Nations (UN). It argues that the agenda can be seen as an example of the UN Human Rights Council attempting to institutionalise everyday utopias within an emerging global public domain. Utilising the concept of embedded pragmatism and tracing the underlying rationale for the emergence of the agenda to the work of Karl Polanyi, the article argues that the Business and Human Rights agenda seeks to institutionalise human rights due diligence processes within transnational corporations in order to create a pragmatic alternative to the stark utopia of laissez-faire liberal markets. It then provides an analytical account of the implications of human rights due diligence for the modes and techniques business utilises to assess human rights harm. It argues that due to the constraints imposed by the concept of embedded pragmatism and the normative indeterminacy of human rights, the Business and Human Rights agenda risks instituting human rights within the corporation through modes and techniques that maintain human rights as a language of crisis, rather than creating the space for novel, everyday utopias to emerge.

On Behalf of the United Nations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Falk
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Special Rapporteur ◽  
Human Rights Council ◽  
Occupied Palestinian Territory ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Palestinian Territory

This chapter reflects on the role as special rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), which investigated the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The chapter first provides an overview of the role and office of special rapporteur, noting that UN concerns about Israel and responses to Palestinian grievances are highly politicized within the organization, before discussing some of the characteristics that distinguish the mandate established by the HRC and made applicable to Occupied Palestine. It also explains what was accomplished in six years as special rapporteur of the HRC and details the controversies and pressures attached to that job. It shows that the “UN” comprises different layers, agendas, and interests. The chapter claims that while the United Nations secretary-general in New York permitted personal attacks against the special rapporteur, the leadership and professionals of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva strongly supported his efforts in what the chapter calls the “legitimacy war”.

International Law, the ECHR, and the EU

2021 ◽  
pp. 212-312
Author(s):  
Jan Wouters ◽  
Michal Ovádek
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Intergovernmental Organization ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Eu

This chapter focuses on the relationship between international law, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and the EU. International law features with respect to the EU both as an object of the EU's internal fundamental rights regime and as a source of human rights obligations. Whereas the latter reflects the original conception of international human rights law, the former is capable of generating unease due to the scope for contravening the principle of supremacy of international law. Moreover, although the ECHR can, in principle, be regarded as international law, it is of special importance to the legal order of the EU and its Member States, in addition to representing the most developed regional regime of human rights protection in the world. The specific character of the EU as neither a typical international (intergovernmental) organization nor a state often complicates the relationship with international law further. Nonetheless, Article 3(5) TEU requires the EU to contribute, in its international relations, ‘to the protection of human rights as well as the strict observance and the development of international law, including the respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter’. The chapter then looks at other Council of Europe instruments and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD).

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