Between Reformism and Conservatism

Introduction: Honor Killing is a murder committed to protect family honor. One case of honor killing occurred in Afghanistan in June 2022, where a family member committed an honor killing on two children who had just gone shopping and were returning home. Even though Afghanistan has made various efforts to protect women's human rights, violations of women's rights still occur.Purposes of the Research: To study and find out about the Jurisdictional Arrangements of the Human Rights Council based on International Law and to study and find out whether the Human Rights Council can intervene in acts of Honor Killing in a country.Methods of the Research :This research method is normative juridical where research is carried out by collecting primary, secondary and tertiary data obtained using library research. The data that has been collected is analyzed qualitatively, the description of which is arranged systematically based on legal disciplines to achieve clarity on the issues to be discussed.Results of the Research: The results of this research show that the jurisdictional arrangements of the Human Rights Council based on international law were established as a body under the United Nations (UN) in 2006, through UN General Assembly resolution 60/251. Regulations regarding the Human Rights Council are contained in the UN Charter, which gives the Human Rights Council a mandate to promote and protect human rights throughout the world. In addition, the basic rules and procedures of the Human Rights Council are regulated by the UN Charter, various international human rights instruments, as well as relevant resolutions and decisions of the UN General Assembly. The Human Rights Council has the authority to monitor the implementation of human rights in its member countries, provide recommendations, and investigate human rights violations. The UN Human Rights Council does not have direct authority to carry out physical intervention or law enforcement in certain countries. However, intervention in specific cases such as honor killings depends on a number of factors, including the policy and authority of the board. Direct intervention in cases of individual crimes, including honor killings, falls under the authority of member states and national legal institutions. The Human Rights Council can encourage countries to take firm action in dealing with human rights violations such as "honor killings" by strengthening the legal system and protection of women.

This chapter uses the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC or Council) as a window to examine the trilateral dynamics between the United States (US), the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) and the European Union (EU) over international human rights norms, institutions and politics. At present, the world is witnessing a US that is just beginning to re-engage with the multilateral human rights system after former President Trump’s damaging disengagement policy; a China that has been seeking to advance an agenda that conflicts with long-established human rights principles; and an EU that has been struggling to preserve the rule- and rights-based international order in light of the changing relations between the world’s two superpowers. This set of new dynamics is destabilising the traditional multilateral human rights framework. In the HRC specifically, the PRC, as the most resourceful party-state, has been forming coalitions both with other authoritarian countries that share its illiberal agenda as well as with developing countries that expect, or are dependent on, economic benefits from Beijing. Backed by these coalitions, China’s stratagems – including contesting universal norms, weakening human rights institutions and intensifying polarisation in international politics – are posing a great challenge to the international human rights system. I argue that the international response to this China challenge has been inadequate and recommend a new approach that focuses on preventing international human rights backsliding. In particular, the US and the EU (along with other democracies and non-state stakeholders in Asia and beyond) must now consolidate existing alliances and forge new ones to push back on China’s authoritarian advances and assertively defend the integrity of the international human rights system.

The 2008 Annual Meeting of American Society of International Law explored topic ?The Politics of International Law'. The organisers of Annual Meeting posed certain questions about this relationship in following terms: Critics contend that international law is really deployment of power politics, and that resolving disputes under auspices of international law in a judicialized forum serves only to ?launder' rule of powerful. The establishment of United Nations Human Rights Council in 2006 and its activities in its first years give occasion for an analysis of relationship between politics and law in human rights work of United Nations. The United Nations General Assembly, in preamble to its resolution establishing Council, recognised the importance of ensuring universality, objectivity and non-selectivity in consideration of human rights issues, and elimination of double standards and politicization. Keywords: American Society; human rights issues; international Law; politics; United Nations General Assembly; United Nations Human Rights Council

This Article explores the recent decisions by the United Nations (“UN”) Human Rights Council and General Assembly to adopt consensus resolutions aimed at “combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief.” These resolutions represent an effort to move past a decade’s worth of contentious roll call votes in favor of prohibiting defamation of religion within the international human rights framework. Although labeled “historic” resolutions, this Article argues that the UN’s new compromise approach endorsed in 2011 — and motivated in part by the desire to end years of acrimonious debate over the acceptability of shielding religious beliefs from insult and criticism — is problematic because it risks being exploited to sanction the continued prohibition on defamation of religion and perpetuation of ensuing human rights violations on the ground.After briefly considering the history of defamation of religion at the UN and the strategies employed by its principal proponent, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (“OIC”), this Article turns to an assessment of the UN Human Rights Council’s 2011 consensus Resolution 16/18. In light of the resolution’s objectives, this Article explores the viability of the new international consensus around “combatting intolerance” and tests to what extent, if any, the concept of defamation of religion may be waning in practice. To this end, this Article weighs statements, resolutions, and other undertakings of the OIC and its member states with a particular emphasis on activities that follow the adoption of Resolution 16/18.Based on this analysis, the Article concludes that the resolutions on combatting intolerance passed in 2011 represent a Clausewitzian moment for many governments, particularly among OIC member states. Essentially, support for the new international consensus on combatting intolerance represents a cynical and strategic decision to continue the campaign to legitimate a ban on defamation of religion by other means. Accordingly, even if defamation of religion per se is on hiatus from the UN, absent additional measures — including a decisive repudiation of the concept’s validity — further international efforts to implement measures for combatting intolerance risk enabling an alternative framework in which governments continue justifying, in the name of protecting religious belief, domestic measures that punish the exercise of freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief.

Canada, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and Universal Periodic Review

Today, the United Nations plays a leading role in the development of international law and cooperation among the world's states. Member states have pledged to realize their rights and fulfill their obligations under the UN Charter. The main objectives of the UN are envisaged in Article 1 of the Charter, where the key provision relating to human rights is reflected in paragraph 3 of Article 1. According to it, the UN aims to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural and humanitarian character and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction of race, sex, language or religion [1]. As it can be seen, the Charter only calls on states parties to promote the protection of human rights, without establishing clear obligations to protect and guarantee them. Since 2014, i.e. since Russia launched its war against Ukraine, the aggressor has not stopped committing crimes against our country and our people. Russia's actions encroach not only on the sovereignty of our state, but also on human rights and freedoms. Under such circumstances, the international community cannot stand aside from these events. Many international human rights organizations have offices in Ukraine. Among them is the UN. On 31.07.2014, the Government of Ukraine and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights signed an agreement on the deployment of a short-term UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine. The legal status of UN monitoring missions in legal science has not been the subject of a separate study. Certain aspects of the activities and competence of such missions have been considered in the works of such scholars as I.A. Shumilo [14], F. Megre [13], K. Boyle [12] and others, which are devoted to the coverage of international mechanisms for the protection of human rights and freedoms, the status of the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council. Therefore, the task set out in this article is to analyze and establish the specifics of the legal status of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission (hereinafter - the Mission), in particular, the one established for Ukraine, and the limits of the Mission's powers under the UN Charter, UN General Assembly resolutions, and international agreements between UN agencies and Ukraine. Therefore, the relevance of this article is beyond doubt. It has been established that the purpose of the Mission is to facilitate cooperation between the Government of Ukraine and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (hereinafter - OHCHR)[2] and it plays the role of a subsidiary mechanism for the protection of human rights and freedoms within the UN. The conclusions of the mission will undoubtedly serve as a convincing additional evidence base for Ukraine in international judicial and other bodies in protecting its interests and establishing the guilt of the Russian Federation for actions committed against our country.

This article questions the widely accepted belief that the institutionalization of human rights norms automatically results in their advancement and safeguarding. Instead, it proposes an alternative view, suggesting that the international human rights framework is intricately entangled with politicization. Focusing on the case of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency in Brazil, we argue that human rights bodies may serve antihuman-rights policies and propaganda. The article is divided into three sections, analyzing Bolsonaro’s and Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo’s rhetoric on human rights, its direct echo in Brazil’s votes in the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the resistance to Bolsonaro’s policies by various actors in the international arena of human rights. We draw on existing scholarship, extensive corpus of speeches, reports, and media coverage to examine the Bolsonaro phenomenon and the limits and fragility of the international human rights regime and diplomacy in responding to it.

The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council’s increased activity came in reaction to the emergence of significant political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa that commenced in late 2010. The High Commissioner must also urgently undertake institutional reforms within the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to enable it to adequately conduct sustained human rights fact-finding and monitoring as needed on a global scale. The observations on the work of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and her Office during this time period detailed in this chapter are derived from first-hand experience. Suzanne Nossel served as US deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations from August 2009 through October 2011 and had significant responsibility for US engagement at the UN Human Rights Council. The reflections in this paper are thus confined to that catalytic, though limited, period of time. Keywords:High Commissioner; Human Rights Council; United Nations (UN)

The United Nations (UN) human rights treaty bodies play a central role in the international framework for the supervision of implementation by states of their treaty obligations. The diplomatic aspect of treaty body work has been brought into new prominence by the extent to which treaty body findings play a role in the application of the Human Rights Council's (HRC) new procedure of universal periodic review (UPR). This chapter explores this dimension of treaty body work and reflects on how they might be strengthened in their important diplomatic function. Ten treaties are generally considered to comprise the core of the UN human rights treaty system. Treaty bodies play a distinct role in the promotion of human rights. Their specialised and detailed function is integral to the implementation of the treaty system. Keywords: diplomatic; human rights; Human Rights Council (HRC); treaty bodies; United Nations (UN); universal periodic review (UPR)

This article critically evaluates three attempts to overcome the problem of fit between international human rights law (IHRL) and the digital ecosystem, through an expansion of the existing IHRL framework to big tech companies. The attempted expansions considered here include standard-setting initiatives involving the imposition on states and companies – large technology companies and other business enterprises – of certain duties to apply IHRL in connection with potentially rights-infringing business practices. As I discuss below, most of the duties identified and/or developed in this regard within the context of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Business and Human Rights (BHR) agenda constitute soft law for the time being. Negotiations for a Legally Binding Instrument (LBI) designed to strengthen the applicable legal framework are ongoing, but their prospects of success remain unclear. Another attempted expansion involves self-regulation by big tech companies through corporate policies aimed at incorporating certain IHRL norms into their business practices. The efforts of Meta to incorporate IHRL into its corporate policies and to offer an IHRL grievance mechanism through the operation of the Meta Oversight Body (focusing mainly on protecting freedom of expression, as articulated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) represent a key case study in this regard. A third attempt to address the aforementioned problem of fit that I consider below involves efforts by special procedures of the Human Rights Council to exercise its standard-setting and monitoring functions in connection with the practices of large technology companies. The work of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression in this area is particularly noteworthy. These three examples of expansion attempts provide useful insights into the potential of IHRL to serve as a legal framework to govern the operations of large technology companies, as well as about the limits of its potential.The article starts by discussing recent developments in the BHR agenda, including efforts to conclude an LBI. The extent to which this agenda represents a promising avenue for holding large technology companies accountable to IHRL norms is then considered in the second and third parts of the article, which discuss two normative initiatives that derive largely from the BHR agenda: this section specifically examines Meta’s espousal of IHRL as part of its corporate BHR policy, and considers attempts by Human Rights Council special procedures to apply IHRL to technology companies.

En los últimos años asistimos a un gran aumento de la conflictividad en torno a la defensa del agua. A pesar de que en 2010 el agua ha sido reconocida como derecho humano y cuenta con un extenso marco de protección, son muchas las vulneraciones de este derecho que se producen en el marco de proyectos extractivos, que causan gran impacto en los territorios en los que se implementan generando enfrentamiento con las comunidades y con las personas que defienden los recursos naturales. Las vulneraciones en las dimensiones del derecho al agua, como disponibilidad, acceso o calidad, se acompañan de múltiples violaciones en los derechos de las personas defensoras, que son asesinadas, perseguidas o amenazadas por la actividad que realizan, siendo muy altos los riesgos que enfrentan las mujeres defensoras, así como las comunidades indígenas. En muchos de estos proyectos se ponen en marcha mecanismos y estrategias de persecución, y criminalización que tratan de desactivar y desacreditar los movimientos colectivos, en un marco de impunidad de las empresas y complicidad de instituciones del estado. La gran conflictividad en torno a la defensa del agua evidencia que los marcos y mecanismos de protección del derecho frente a la actuación de muchas empresas resultan insuficientes. Ante la falta de mecanismos de protección efectivos por parte de los estados y las violaciones cometidas por muchas empresas transnacionales en el marco del extractivismo hídrico, también han ido surgiendo proyectos de resistencia y de defensa en los territorios, que han ido articulando la lucha y la defensa por los derechos al agua, poniendo en valor los significados del agua, nuevas narrativas y alternativas en torno a otros modelos de organización y relación con la naturaleza. Las propuestas y miradas de estos movimientos deben ser tenidas en cuenta para avanzar en las reflexiones y análisis que van configurando el marco de defensa en torno al derecho al agua y con ello también, la conceptualización de este derecho. Se hace un análisis del marco normativo de protección del derecho al agua y de los derechos de las personas que defienden los recursos naturales, seguido de un análisis de la realidad a través de informes que evidencian la vulneración de este derecho, mostrando con ello las debilidades del sistema de protección y la necesidad de mecanismos vinculantes. Por último, se analiza todo otro marco de defensa del agua, diferente al del derecho, que emerge desde los territorios a partir de los proyectos de resistencia colectiva que al mismo tiempo son alternativa y muestran otra forma de relación y organización del agua y el territorio. Para el desarrollo de este artículo se han tenido en cuenta investigaciones previas en distintos países de América Latina, concretamente en Guatemala, El Salvador o México, contrastadas con numerosas fuentes primarias y secundarias procedentes de resoluciones e informes internacionales, así como distintos análisis de estos últimos años. Por ello, muchas de las reflexiones se ilustran y ejemplifican a través de casos concretos, que han sido previamente investigados y documentados.

An array of adjectives is often used when referring to what is now commonly abbreviated as the ‘right to a healthy environment’. For instance, the United Nations (UN) mandate on human rights and the environment established in 2012 regularly used four adjectives in connection to the right: ‘safe’, ‘clean’, ‘healthy’ and ‘sustainable’. Those four adjectives accordingly featured in the draft resolution first tabled before the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 to recognise the right to a healthy environment formally. However, before the vote, the resolution’s sponsors quietly dropped the word ‘safe’ from the text in a last-minute change. The human right, now recognised by the Human Rights Council and later by the UN General Assembly in 2022, is the ‘right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment’; ‘safe’ is absent. The abandonment of ‘safe’ in the resolution and the reasons given for doing so have attracted little attention in the scholarship to date. The objections to the inclusion of ‘safe’ in the resolution are primarily rooted in a claim that the term ‘safe’ is indeterminate and vague. This article refutes those objections by providing a normative account of ‘safety’ in the right to a healthy environment. In doing so, this article endorses the strategic and discursive value of ‘safety’, contending that the right to a healthy environment should, in any event, be interpreted to ensure that the legal and human interests addressed by the concept of ‘safety’ continue to be adequately protected.

International human rights bodies have repeatedly been confronted with situations of armed conflict and consequently also with the potential complementary application of human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL) in such situations. Within their human rights-related mandates, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council and its special procedures, UN human rights treaty bodies, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights have developed a limited practice in dealing with IHL. In any case, these bodies have displayed different attitudes towards IHL and have contributed in different ways to understanding the links between human rights and IHL. Their practice can be seen as a non-State perspective on IHL with the potential to inform the law’s further development. This chapter traces how, on what basis and with which consequences, international human rights bodies contribute to the development of IHL.

The United Nations Human Rights Council was created in 2006 to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights. The Council’s mandate and founding principles demonstrate that one of the main aims, at its creation, was for the Council to overcome the Commission’s flaws. Despite the need to avoid repeating its predecessor's failings, the Council’s form, nature and many of its roles and functions are strikingly similar to those of the Commission. This book examines the creation and formative years of the United Nations Human Rights Council and assesses the extent to which the Council has fulfilled its mandate. International law and theories of international relations are used to examine the Council and its functions. Council sessions, procedures and mechanisms are analysed in-depth, with particular consideration given to whether the Council has become politicised to the same extent as the Commission. Whilst remaining aware of the key differences in their functions, Rosa Freedman compares the work of the Council to that of treaty-based human rights bodies. The author draws on observations from her attendance at Council proceedings in order to offer a unique account of how the body works in practice. The United Nations Human Rights Council will be of great interest to students and scholars of human rights law and international relations, as well as lawyers, NGOs and relevant government agencies.

The right to water has passed through many steps until it has received a full legal adoption in the international human rights law and international water law. However, there are many parties which feel that the right to water should not stand on its own as it complicates the present legal framework for international human rights. This paper examined, based on qualitative research approach, several impediments in legislating water as a human right within the purview of relevant international human rights conventions, taking into account the United Nations (UN) Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals No. 3: Good Health and Well-being and Goal No. 6: Clean Water and Sanitation. The study indicates that human rights notions have been gaining influential rule in international water law, notably human right to water, which has been recognized by the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council (HRC). This study however concludes that despite efforts to deny the legal basis of the right to water as one of the soft law, this right remains as a basic human right and should be respected by all countries.