Reform of the UN Commission on Human Rights
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934410402200401 |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Column |
REFORM OF THE UN COMMISSION ON
HUMAN RIGHTS*
Now that the dust has settled and the 3,000 participants have gone home from the
60
th
session of the UN Commission on Human Rights
1
it is time to think once again
about reform of the Commission. The Commission on Human Rights is, of course,
the pre-eminent human rights body within the United Nations. The Commission
with its 53 member governments meets for six weeks each March-April in Geneva
and considers both country-related and thematic issues.
The Commission is well known for its highly fractious, regionally divided, and
contentious political atmosphere, which frequently gets in the way of human rights
progress. This problem is especially pronounced with regard to country work which
absorbs the great majority of the energy and time at each Commission session. The
Commission’s use of country special rapporteurs, adoption of resolutions on specific
countries, chairpersons’ statements, and other measures permit the application of
general human rights concerns to particular situations. There is, however, a major
push from some African and Asian nations to terminate the ‘name and blame’
country work of the Commission that has slowly developed over the past 30 years.
Those negative efforts and some self-interested regional and national lobbying have
impeded Commission responses to human rights violations in several country
situations, including China, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Saudi
Arabia, and Zimbabwe.
At the same time, however, the Commission in 2004 was able to take its most
visible possible action by authorising special rapporteurs/independent experts on
the human rights situation in Belarus, Myanmar (Burma), Israel/Palestinian
Occupied Territories, and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. Further-
more, the Commission mandated an independent expert on Uzbekistan pursuant to
the confidential procedure authorised by Economic and Social Council Resolution
1503. The Commission also adopted resolutions/decisions without authorisation of
a rapporteur as to a number of other countries including Cuba, Cyprus, occupied
Palestinian territory, occupied Syrian Golan, Turkmenistan, and the Western
Sahara. In addition, the Commission’s Chairperson announced slightly less visible
consensus statements regarding Afghanistan, Colombia, Haiti, Nepal, and Timor-
Leste. Moreover, the Commission authorised advisory services with regard to several
countries in which there are serious human rights problems but as to which the
government is considered – sometimes unrealistically – to be co-operating with
international measures to improve the situation: Burundi, Cambodia, Chad, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Somalia.
COLUMN
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 22/4, 525-527, 2004.
#Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Printed in the Netherlands. 525
* David Weissbrodt, Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law, University of Minnesota; Co-Director
University of Minnesota Human Rights Center; former member of the UN Sub-Commission on the
Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (1996-2003). Views expressed in this column are of a
strictly personal nature and are not necessarily shared by the editors.
1
Thiele, Bret and Gomez, Mayra, ‘A Review of the Sixtieth Session of the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights’, Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2004, p. 469.
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