UN's role in promoting human rights (original) (raw)

The Future of Human Rights: A View from the United Nations

Ethics & International Affairs, 2014

Ever since the Charter of the United Nations was signed in 1945, human rights have constituted one of its three pillars, along with peace and development. As noted in a dictum coined during the World Summit of 2005: “There can be no peace without development, no development without peace, and neither without respect for human rights.” But while progress has been made in all three domains, it is with respect to human rights that the organization's performance has experienced some of its greatest shortcomings. Not coincidentally, the human rights pillar receives only a fraction of the resources enjoyed by the other two—a mere 3 percent of the general budget.

United Nations and Human Rights: The Unfinished Business

This Article reflects on the United Nations and its goals in the contexts of its sixtieth founding anniversary. It foregrounds the point that the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) remains the central element in the UN’s goal of promoting peace and preventing the cause of war. Notheless, it argues that the global body faces two major constraints. One, the continuing controversy over what constitutes rights and its consequent bifurcation into two sets of rights that are either negative or positive, namely, civil and political rights and social-economic and cultural rights. And two, the post 9/11 indiscriminate war against terrorism which has spawned a raft of anti-freedom legislations, especially in the West. Against this background, the article concludes that the survival of the UN would depend on its capacity to privilege the inalienability and indivisibility of the rights of man; and that if the global body fails in its goals of promoting global peace; it is not the UN that has failed per se but its member states.

Human Rights in the Seventy-Fifth Year of the UN

Ethics & International Affairs, 2020

As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay looks at the UN's human rights efforts through the lens of the ethics of survival, normative ethics, the ethics of protection, institutional ethics, and the ethics of the human predicament in the face of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The essay finds that while the consecration of the right to life has made a contribution to the ethics of human survival, the overall impact of the human rights program has been marginal. Normative ethics shows the UN performing magisterially in drafting and adopting a body of international norms for the universal protection of human rights. However, when it comes to the ethics of protection, the UN performs poorly because of the numerous oppressive governments that control the world body. On the ethics of the human predicament, this essay finds that SDG 16, which is devoted to development, peace, justice, and strong institution...

The United Nations (UN) and human rights: Challenges and prospects

African Journal of Political Science and International Relations, 2020

The two World Wars (1914-18, 1939-1945) cannot be forgotten easily. This is because of their uncanny brutality and imponderable consequences which in no small measure demonstrated man’s capacity to destroy himself and decimate the environment. This assertion is predicated on the millions of people who were gruesomely killed, maimed and properties wantonly destroyed. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction undoubtedly became an easy way to mediate an insatiable economic instinct. Propelled by the desire to save the human family from imminent extinction, world leaders decided to stop the carnage. They were convinced that upholding the tenets of human freedom in all ramifications offers a guarantee for human security and development. Therefore, this study seeks to examine the extent the UN has been able to ensure that human rights become the cornerstone of human security, its challenges and prospects. This is a qualitative study, and data collected was based solely on secondar...

People First, Nations Second: A New Role for the UN as an Assertive Human Rights Custodian.

The tragedy of East Timor in 2000 coming so soon after that of Kosovo focused attention on the weaknesses of previous United Nations missions that have been ad hoc, reactive, and narrowly focused on solving the international emergency of the moment. The United Nations and its Members need to focus on the need for timely intervention to save civilian populations from mass slaughter. It must adopt a new role as the assertive custodian of human rights because the use of its enforcement powers in the domestic affairs of rogue States may have a deterrent effect. Therefore, it should lead the way in defining its interventionist role in the emerging international norm of humanitarian intervention.