Human Rights Machinery

This essay compares and contrasts the effectiveness of regional and universal human rights mechanisms, including the UN and the International Court of Justice. Firstly, it explores the ability of International human rights organisations to ensure the protection of human rights, focusing on x y z. Secondly, it analyses the strengths and weakness of regional human rights bodies – highlighting x y z. This essays concludes that the State-centric nature of the international system fundamentally undermines the ability to ensure human rights protection and suggests areas for further reform.

The UN Human Rights Machinery

This essays explores whether the Universal nature of UN Human Rights Machinery makes it an effective mechanism by which to ensure protection for human rights. Firstly, it looks at the ability of the Human Rights Council to uphold its mandate to promote global respect for human rights and to respond to rights violations. In particular it examines its inherited flaws stemming from the Commission concerning membership issues, and explores the potential for the Council’s impact with respect to Treaty Monitoring Bodies, Universal Periodic Review, and Special Measures.

Human Rights Council

Inherited Flaws from the Commission

In March 2006, the UN General Assembly abolished the Commission on Human Rights and created a new Human Rights Council which was established on 19 June 2006. There were lots of suggestions as to how best reform the Commission in order to ensure the highest level of human rights protection. Over its 60-year period of operation the Commission had been deeply criticised regarding its ability to effective enforce state compliance. One the one hand commentators stated that it had adopted too much of a conciliatory approach and was constantly avoiding confrontation with governments of its member states, whilst on the other hand other organisations attacked the commission credibility precisely because it had failed to condemn...