Participation as “Indigenous Peoples” in the United Nations Human Rights Council

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

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)

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.

As the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council approaches its sixteenth birthday, this article examines its performance to date. It highlights the Council’s achievements, including in upscaling its preventative capabilities, addressing thematic issues of cultural sensitivity and historically divisive country situations, and establishing a truly universal mechanism for reviewing the human rights record of every UN member state. However, it also identifies major weaknesses, including the persistent appointment of states with poor human rights records to the Council, escalating reprisals against individuals who cooperate with the Council’s mechanisms, inefficient working methods, impotence in the face of chronic human rights emergencies, and unequal opportunities for civil society engagement. The article reveals that the most significant progress has been achieved, not through formal inter-governmental negotiations, but incrementally as a result of effective outreach and international assistance, all propelled forward by civil society activism. It concludes that at this pivotal moment in the Council’s lifetime, strong leadership and thoughtful diplomacy are needed now more than ever to achieve concrete improvements in the human rights situation on the ground or, at the very least, to avoid retrogression.

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 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

In 2006, a new Human Rights Council came into existence, replacing the former Commission on Human Rights with a restructured intergovernmental body for the global promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Heralded as a turning point for human rights within the (IN system, it was hoped that the new 47-member Council would operate with a renewed emphasis on fairness and objectivity, although it must always be remembered that the Council remains a political body governed by and directed by states. As a member of the Council from 2006-2009, Canada became known as the lead voice of opposition, voting against what it viewed as unbalanced resolutions censuring Israel and the adoption of a long-awaited United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada also voted on principle and with the support of its usual allies against a variety of resolutions reflecting an agenda embraced by Asian, African and Islamic states, who can use their Council vote allocations to serve their own political goals at the expense of achieving consensus. More worrisome, however for the general health of the field of international human rights law is the seemingly unbridgeable gap between developed and developing states concerning the recognition of so-called third generation human rights, including collective human rights with an economic dimension, that is revealed by this review of the Council's resolution and decision-making activities from 2006-2009, focusing on those actions which were decided by a recorded vote. While the divisions between rich and poor and North vs. South, clearly pre-date the Council's establishment, their continuation and impact within a new institution dedicated to renewed cooperation reveals a degree of dysfunction worthy of further discussion during the Council's first review scheduled to take place in 2011.

Human rights activists worldwide rely heavily on naming and shaming rights‐abusing states at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to induce them to comply with international human rights norms. However, what about national‐level actors who seek to shame a government for complying with human rights? This article explores how Sinhala Buddhist ethnonationalist political leaders and ideologues in Sri Lanka invoked the trope of sovereignty as both autonomy and masculinity to shame the new United Front government (2015‐19) and its UN‐supported transitional justice programme designed to address war crimes committed by the state during the last phase of the civil war. In so doing, I draw on and contribute to the literature on shame and global governance and feminist and critical scholarship on sovereignty and masculinity. Moreover, this analysis contends that it is not possible to understand the logic and efficacy of these tropes in postwar Sri Lanka unless we consider the emergence of a hegemonic, anti‐Western, patriotic masculinity and a new idiom of honour that supplements the concept of lajja‐baya (shame and fear of shame) – a central category in the anthropological canon of Sri Lanka.

Viet Nam has finished two national reports under the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review. The Vietnamese national reports were prepared in accordance with the general guidelines of the Human Rights Council and experience learnt from other countries. However, the process of Viet Nam’s preparation of its national reports reveals some shortcomings that should be considered. In order to fulfill the obligations of international human rights treaties of which Viet Nam is a party, the process of Viet Nam’s preparation of national reports should be continuously improved to further ensure and promote fundamental human rights in Viet Nam.

ABSTRACTScholarship to date has analysed the politics surrounding the United Nations Human Rights Council (the Council) and examined the Universal Periodic Review. Less has been uncovered about what states are doing as Council members. Is their human rights ‘performance’, namely their behaviour, enhanced by Council membership? Or is Council membership more about ‘performativity’ – that is, the use of language as a form of action with the intention of effecting changes in the performance of other actors? This paper introduces these questions in the context of Australia’s 2018–2020 Council membership term. The potential impacts of membership for Australia are salient given its lack of a constitutional or statutory Bill of Rights and the lack of any regional human rights mechanism in the Asia-Pacific. Australia’s bid for a seat on the Council had five pillars: gender equality, good governance, freedom of expression, rights of Indigenous peoples, and strong national human rights institutions and capacity building. The paper assesses Australia’s performance and performativity in relation to a selection of its voluntary pledges as a Council member. We reflect on the challenges inherent in holding states to their human rights obligations when international institutions struggle to require accountability, transparency and verifiability of commitments.

Introduction Migration is at the core of today’s professional sport. In football, since 2020, the rate of migrant players has increased by 20% (Poli et al., 2024). Transnational mobility has become a highly valuable commodity making transnational football career an inescapable pathway to either professional level or world-class level. Therefore, understanding cross-borders sports mobility processes is crucial for both players and stakeholders to effectively prepare and negotiate cultural transitions. Transnational career and pathway research in sport psychology is recent, limited, and suggests that maintaining a career as a migratory athlete remains challenging (Book et al., 2021; Ryba & et al., 2016; Storm et al., 2022). By identifying challenges faced, and psychological process involved, those researches highlight at what extent culture frames athletes’ sport and non-sport life experiences. However, no studies focused on neither the first cultural transition nor African athletes. From analysis of some previous studies, it seems that the experience of the first cultural transition shapes the willingness to initiate and the experience of the following migrations (Book et al., 2021; Ryba et al., 2016). On the other hand, African countries are deeply distinct from the most other countries worldwide regarding relevant features shaping people’s life experience: social security, gross domestic product, facilities, governance, and race. Furthermore, African countries are among those displaying the highest growth of expatriate footballers (Poli et al., 2024). Additionally, most of athletic migrations from Africa correspond to forced migration (United Nations Humans Rights Council, 2022), with the difference that it is triggered by a contract. Thus, what characterize the experience of the first cultural transition of African footballers? This study aimed to explore the athletic transnational career of Cameroonian footballers to characterize their experience of the first cultural transition. Methods This study is grounded within Critical Realism philosophy. It is useful to engage causal analysis and explanation of social problems and suggest practical recommendations for social change (Fletcher, 2017). Fourteen Cameroonian former footballers were purposively sampled following three criteria: having spent at least the formative years in Cameroon, did the first cultural transition for athletic career development, and having played professionally for a football club abroad at least one season. The participants’ position in the pitch included all the main positions acknowledged in football (goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, and striker), and the country of their first cultural transition included the four continents (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Indonesia, Greece, Côte d’Ivoire, Paraguay, Italy, Switzerland, and Turkey). The semi-structured interviews based on life story and timeline interviews approaches were conducted, focusing on the participants’ experience of athletic transnational mobilities. This included a series of two interview sessions which lasted between 25 and 121 minutes. A total of 26 interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and reflexively thematically analyzed (Braun & Clarke, 2021). The study applied the four rigorous criteria to ensure qualitative study trustworthiness: credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Results Nine themes (with their sub-themes) and their relationship were identified: Mental Health Issues (MHI), Context of athletic migration and seven challenges related to: Club and Contract, Team, Pitch, Way of life, Geography, Home country, and High Level Athlete status. MHI emerged as output of the context and challenges. MHI were characterized by players’ psychological distress and inability to understand that condition, and inability of the club leading team to understand what they were going through. The context of athletic migration was characterized by unplanned transition, adolescence, club’s facilities, and perception of moving abroad as having succeed their football career and life (satisfaction of achieving the dream). Challenges characterized tough situations players went through like contract disruption (club and team), broken In-group (team), injury (pitch), new mentality (way of life), winter (geography), long-distance relationship (home country), and experience of professionalism (High Level Athlete status). Discussion/Conclusion This research is the first to study the first cultural transition of athletes and to use a sample of athletes from Africa. The results depict main features characterizing the experience of the first athletic migration of young talented Cameroonian footballers. Applying critical realism philosophy, MHI was identified as the effect of the migration context and challenges faced. Those findings are consistent with the holistic developmental and ecological perspectives to talent development (Wylleman & Rosier, 2016), Intersectionality (Book et al., 2021), cultural sport psychology (Schinke & Hanrahan, 2009), and challenges underscored in previous transnational athletic career studies (Book et al., 2021; Ryba et al., 2016; Storm et al., 2022). Most importantly, this study highlights new result patterns enriching literature and providing critical information for African athletes and sport stakeholders: MHI (explicitly underscored), context of athletic migration, challenges related to winter, new mentality, broken In-group, etc. As successful talented footballers, they anticipated migration with professional contract as the guarantee of happiness. Actually, those young talented footballers navigated through the satisfaction of achieving professional level and distress. They struggled with psychological distress by shouldering the acculturation load and some professional football’s drifts in an environment which was not supportive enough, because it does not understand them. They could not seek for help because the lack means to understand their condition. Thus, this study is directly related to two Sustainable Development Goals (the third and eighth) by addressing mental health and decent work (United Nations Humans Rights Council, 2022). The results suggest several practical implications: informed football stakeholders’ action, strengthen coaches’ training, adjust sport psychologists’ intervention, and build solid preparatory foundation for next transnational African footballers. References Book, R. T., Jr., Henriksen, K., & Stambulova, N. (2021). Oatmeal is better than no meal: The career pathways of African American male professional athletes from underserved communities in the United States. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 19(4), 504–523. https://doi.org/10.1080/1612197X.2020.1735258 Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2021). One size fits all? What counts as quality practice in (reflexive) thematic analysis? Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(3), 328–352. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2020.1769238 Fletcher, A. J. (2017). Applying critical realism in qualitative research: Methodology meets method. International Journal of Social Research Methodology: Theory & Practice, 20(2), 181–194. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2016.1144401 Lincoln, Y., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Sage. Poli, R., Ravenel, L., & Besson, R. (2024, May). Origins and destinations of football expatriates (2020–2024). CIES Football Observatory [Monthly Report n°95]. https://football-observatory.com/MonthlyReport95 Ryba, T. V., Stambulova, N. B., & Ronkainen, N. J. (2016). The work of cultural transition: An emerging model. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 427. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00427 Schinke, R. J., & Hanrahan, S. J. (Eds.). (2009). Cultural sport psychology. Human Kinetics. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781492595366 Storm, L. K., Book, R. T., Jr., Hoyer, S. S., Henriksen, K., Küttel, A., & Larsen, C. H. (2022). Every boy’s dream: A mixed method study of young professional Danish football players’ transnational migration. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 59, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2021.102125 United Nations Human Rights Council. (2022). Mid-year trends 2022. https://www.unhcr.org/mid-year-trends Wylleman, P., & Rosier, N. (2016). Holistic perspective on the development of elite athletes. In M. Raab, P. Wylleman, R. Seiler, A.-M. Elbe, & A. Hatzigeorgiadis (Eds.), Sport and exercise psychology research: From theory to practice (pp. 270–282). Elsevier Inc.

The scale and complexity of the issues posed by the Anthropocene requires resolution through the involvement of science with alternative knowledge systems. Indigenous peoples provide a rich source of alternative knowledge systems. The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) offers a way of involving indigenous perspectives into global discourses about the Anthropocene. UPR subjects each UN member state to a periodically scheduled review of its human rights record, but does so by welcoming reports from non-state sources including indigenous peoples. Indigenous use of UPR is welcomed by the UN HRC and encouraged by the International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs. While the UPR is ostensibly a component of the UN human rights system, it has become an inclusive process accommodating human rights issues arising from a broad array of subjects, including environmental problems. This means that the UPR allows indigenous peoples to take local environmental problems to an international level.

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.

The cultures, languages and heritages of Indigenous peoples are threatened globally. If language loss is taken as an indicator of the loss of a people’s intangible cultural heritage (as embodied in their folklore, oral traditions and expressive arts), it has been predicted that the world will lose one-third of its remaining languages by the end of the twenty-first century. In this chapter, a review and an assessment are made of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICHC) in terms of what its provisions contain that will help Indigenous peoples to gain a measure of protection for their intangible cultural heritage. This, under the Convention, includes their oral traditions, languages, performing arts, social practices, traditional knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, and traditional artisanship. Of particular importance is the extent to which Indigenous peoples themselves are empowered by the Convention to effectively protect and maintain their own intangible cultural heritage and to participate in the Convention’s processes. The relative strengths and weaknesses of the ICHC are also assessed against other standard-setting international instruments and processes that can be used to provide a measure of protection for the intangible cultural heritage of indigenous peoples, particularly in relation to their languages and traditional knowledge such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2006) and ILO Convention (No. 169) Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries. Reference is also made to the relevance and effectiveness of the suite of intellectual property laws overseen by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and particularly the deliberations of the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore regarding the development of a sui generis law forthe protection of traditional knowledge. Other international environmental treaties and processes, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the ‘Seed Treaty’) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, are also examined to provide a comparative perspective on what measures are currently being taken that can enable the maintenance and survival of aspects of the intangible cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples. Before reviewing the ICHC, and placing it within the context of other instruments, it will be useful to summarise its key features.

At the core of the human rights debate lies the question of whether human rights can be considered as a universal ideal and yet able to integrate cultural differences from diverse societies. At the global arena the mandate for ensuring and strengthening the protection and promotion of human rights is bestowed on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) through the preparation of a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of all member states of the United Nations wherein every state is given the opportunity to make recommendations on every other country’s human rights record. The latest UPR was conducted in May 2017 and 14 states were reviewed including India wherein 250 recommendations were made to India to improve its human rights record. In this regard India promised to ‘accept’ 152 of the recommendations and ‘noted’ the rest which includes recommendations such as elimination of gender-based prejudices, traditional practices, and provisions of personal status laws that are harmful and discriminatory to women and girls; elimination of criminalization of same-sex relations, criminalization of marital rape, and adequate protections to LGBT citizens. With India being elected as a member of the UNHRC in 2018, this paper seeks to explore and analyse India’s role in the development and implementation of human rights as a member state of the UNHRC in the realisation of gender equality with particular emphasis on the role of the Indian government’s policies and judicial precedents. The paper locates this discussion in the broader realm of the universalism versus cultural relativism debate in the implementation of gender equality.