IPHR UN Charter Failure To Protect Essay

The United Nations through its Charter based organs has systematically failed to protect
individual rights around the world.’

Discuss.
To consider this statement, one must first briefly examine what are individual rights, the
Charter and the Charter based organs. Individual rights can be simply explained as the
rights awarded to an individual irrespective of external factors. These include rights such
as right to life and freedom, and civil and political rights including the right to vote.
The Preamble of the UN Charter clearly highlights the UN objectives of saving the
succeeding generations from the horrors of war, reaffirming faith and fundamental human
rights in the dignity and worth of a human being. The UN also attempts to establish the
equal rights of men and women and nations, and to also establish conditions under which
justice and obligations which arise from the treaties and other sources can be effectively
maintained. The UN aims to promote social progress and better standards of life,
reiterating the importance of freedom. Article 55 of the Charter also considers human
rights, which retrospectively, have been given far more importance than assumed at the
time the Charter was created.
The General Assembly of the UN is composed of all member states and has the capacity
of making recommendations to the Security Council as well. The SC has 15 members, 5
permanent and with veto power. The 5 permanent countries are Russia, USA, China,
Great Britain, and France, the 5 powers at the end of 1945, and also the 5 declared
nuclear powers. The other ten members are on a rotational basis. The real power within
the UN lies within the SC. Another organ, ECOSOC, established by Article 62, has the
ability to make or initiate studies and reports with respect to international economic, social,
and cultural matters and may make recommendations to the GA for the purpose of
promoting human rights. Article 68 allows this organ to set up commissions in economic
and social fields, the UNCHR being their creation, and later fundamental in the
establishment of the UNDHR, covenants and key human rights treaties. The UNCHR was
succeeded by the UNHRC in 2006. These bodies are designed to protect individual rights.
The UNCHR was seen as being overly partisan, biased and lost most of its credibility
among most states, which rendered it no longer able to function with any credibility.
ECOSOC procedures 1235 and 1503 were also monumental, as it allowed states to be
held accountable by their peers. The UNHRC has also adopted resolutions similar to
procedure 1503. It’s worth noting that these procedures are largely dependant on politics
and political influence, so the more weight a state has amongst nations, the less likely it is
to face censure.
Another important mechanism developed by the UN Charter base mechanisms are the
special procedures, which are thematic country mandates. A Special rapporteur on poverty
in a country will be highly respected individuals tasked with carrying out investigations and
aim to propose methods to improve the overall situation, including human rights and
challenges faced. The complaint procedure, based on UNCHR’s 1503 procedure, and the
Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, the think tank of the UNHRC are two other
important aspects of the UNHRC that contribute to the protection of human rights.
The UN treaty-based mechanisms too aim to protect human rights. The UNDHR was a
catalyst and led to the adoption of many subsequent legally binding documents. Examples
of these include the ICCPR and CECSR, the Women’s convention and the Convention on
the Rights of a Child. These treaty bodies have various enforcement mechanisms
including state reporting systems and petition systems and are focused on the protection
of individual rights.
UN treaty bodies system, as enforced through the Charter based UN Organs, can be
appreciated as having value and importance in its work. However, they suffer from
significant problems. Some of these issues included delayed reports, inadequate reports,
lack of state corporation with treaty bodies, the lack of implementation of findings,
duplicate issues, contradicting approaches to issues and lack of time to assess matters
are only a handful. One could state that “In actual fact the list is a long and rather
depressing one” (Module guide). There has been discussion concerning the reform of the
UN treaty bodies to cope with their workload and the backlogs of reports, for many years
now. In many instances, after a report has been submitted, so much time has passed that
it is then the time for the next report to be due. In some cases, several reports from the
same country are considered together. Though these issues exist, the state reporting
mechanism is advantageous as all states have to accept it. It is based on constructive
dialogue focused on improvement as opposed to passing judgement on a state.
There is also the pressing issue of non-cooperation of a number of states, in the past and
at present. There has been talk of crisis and reform for quite some time as brought out in
General Assembly Resolution A/68/L.37 which is concerned with the “Strengthening and
enhancing the effective functioning of the human rights treaty body system”. The GA,
being a charter based body, was able to identify the issues in mechanism which paved the
way to 2019, where the chairpersons of the UN treaty bodies took a key step by adopting a
‘position paper’ which agrees to a sort of general alignment of working methods, a step
that one could consider a significant one.
According to this, there will be a simplified reporting procedure which means State
Reports will become less of a burden on states. Secondly, the paper lays out that there will
be a reduction of unnecessary overlap. All treaty bodies will be required to coordinate the
list of issues to be discussed with a state prior to the discussion of that state’s reports.
Thirdly, the Position paper lays out that the timing of the reporting cycles will change. The
treaty obligations will not change but there is more scope as to scheduling as to when
states will be able to discuss their reports. The two Covenant Committees have also been
given the option where they may choose to offer states parties the option of a joint report.
Accordingly, the treaty bodies have agreed to follow the same general format for the
consideration of reports. An exceptional development is the recognition that the dialogue
may take place via video conference. Conveniently, the treaty bodies’ concluding
observations will follow this same approach. The aim is for the observations to be short,
focused, and specific, with priority given to balancing immediate goals with longer term
goals and objectives. There will also be changes made to the capacity of the treaty bodies
to review documents. Some of the agreed upon methods include working in chambers,
working in groups or as country teams. This is hoped to greatly help the need to review
between 25 and 50 reports per year. The committees will also consider conducting
discussions with states parties concerning their reports on a more regional basis.
The question of how these changes will cause a hopefully positive difference and how
states will respond them, remains unanswered at the moment. There has been mention of
crisis in the UN treaty bodies for more than 20 years. One could argue that putting
matters into the hands of the UN treaty bodies as opposed to in the hands of state parties
will help to resolve such issues.
Given the replacement of the UNCHR due to issues related to bias and lack of credibility,
as well as the issues seen in reporting mechanisms such as significant delays and non-co-
operation of states, one can see that there have been many issues in protecting individual
rights. With the subsequent UNHRC and its mechanisms as well as the support of the
treaty bodies, one can say that some of the UNCHR’s issues have been mitigated. Though
there still has been some issues and difficulty, it may be inopportune to claim that there
has been systematic failure in the protection of individual rights. [1325]

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The United Nations through its Charter based organs has systematically failed to protect

individual rights around the world.’

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