Monitoring, implementing, and enforcing human rights §

• What is inter-state compliant?
  • Compliant made by state/individual who is party of treaty/convention about the violation of it.
• How it works?
  1. Receive reliable info about violation
  2. Visit and cooperate with state in submitting it
  3. Conduct inquiries & report back with state consent
  4. Finding’s examination and giving suggestion
• Compliance through
  • Force: Sanctions
  • Fear of losing face or bad publicity
• Individual compliant through
  • Court based mechanism: for court to analyze if there is a breach
  • Independent bodies: to communicated as middle man between individual and court
    • Committee on all forms of racial discrimination
  • Nation level: easier because established in every state
  • Special investigator, repeteour: receive compliant from NGO and individuals, retrieve info from sources, investigate, questionnaires for more info
• Red cross: helping victims of warfare

What are the mechanisms which allow individual to file complaint? §

• Individuals can file compliant to the court to figure out if the accused is in breach of articles in the covenant
• The other mechanism is the complaint has to be brought to independent bodies (monitoring body) who can communicate between the individuals and the court.
  • For example, the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is one of the monitoring bodies that receive individual communication , hear the facts alleged and relevant to national law, argue the violation and response of state.
• For remedy, both the European and American Courts can and do award financial compensation to victims of breaches of the regional convention.
  • The African Commission requests compensation is addressed by the violating State but does not specify amounts.
• However, author suggested that National human rights institutions, although not established in every State, are intended to facilitate some national-level complaints better than international human rights body which will be not accepted or slow process.

Who are the special investigator and rapporteurs? What do they do? §

• They are the expert appointed by UN human rights council
• => special investigator and Rapporteurs are people who work under the international human rights monitoring bodies :
  1. Received complaints from NGOs and individuals.
  2. work in partial response to information received from various sources including individuals and groups
  3. They will only investigate what has not been investigated before by elsewhere in the UN draft and circulate questionnaires for the purpose of gathering information on selected salient issues across a wide range of states.

What are their contributions to the fields? §

• Selected rights and freedoms has raised the profile of human rights
• Their survey and other statistical data collected by rapporteurs used to assist the international and regional bodies in developing standards.

What are the roles of the UNHCR? United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee §

- The United Nations Hight Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) is in charge of leading and coordinating international efforts to safeguard and resolve refugees across the world. - Its main goal is to protect refugees’ rights and well-being by aiding asylum or repatriation as needed.

What does UNICEF do in relation to Human Rights? §

• The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was created in 1946, initially to help children in Europe after the second world war, and now UNICEF’s role is to help children worldwide.
  • The role can be summed up promoting, protecting as well as educating children of their rights, and collaborating with other UN Human rights agencies to protect the rights of children.
• UNICEF works to ensure that children receive the care they require during their early years, including protection from death and disease, as well as assistance during natural disasters.
• It actively supports children’s rights, collaborating with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to encourage the distribution of information on children’s rights to children.
• It works to defend children’s rights, provide their basic needs, and provide them with more opportunity to realise their full potential.
• The organisation aspires to educate all children about their human rights using multimedia packages and the Internet.
• Other UNICEF efforts, such as collaboration programs in healthcare, aim to improve the wellbeing of children.

UNESCO §

• UNESCO’s objective is to use education, science, culture, communication, and information to contribute to the creation of a culture of peace, poverty eradication, sustainable development, and intercultural dialogue.
• UNESCO seeks to foster interaction across civilizations, cultures, and peoples, based on mutual respect for shared ideals.
• The globe can attain global ideals of sustainable development through this conversation, which include human rights adherence, mutual respect, and poverty alleviation, all of which are central to UNESCO’s mandate and activities.
• UNESCO has established a number of goals in the global priority areas of “Africa” and “Gender Equality.”
• In addition, there are other broader goals:
  • Obtaining high-quality education and lifelong learning for everybody
  • Science and policy mobilization for long-term development
  • Taking on new social and ethical concerns
  • Building inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication Fostering cultural variety, intercultural conversation, and a culture of peace

The International Committee of the Red Cross? §

• The International Committee of the Red Cross is an unbiased, neutral, and autonomous humanitarian organization

• Objectives

  • sole objective is to defend the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict and other forms of violence, as well as to provide help to them.
  • works to avoid suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian ideals.

• The Red Cross’ key responsibilities include:

  • To provide aid and assistance to victims of any disaster - fire, flood, starvation, earthquakes, and so on.
  • To collect and distribute blood for victims of war and other disasters.
  • To provide all necessary first-aid in the event of an accident
  • To teach individuals how to avoid accidents.
  • In all emergencies, arrange for ambulance service.
  • Taking care of maternity and child welfare centers
  • Train midwives

NGOs §

• Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are also important factors which play the roles in the Human Rights such as:
  • They send their representatives as observers to the United Nations’ discussions on human rights
  • NGOs also contribute to education, training, and research about the human rights in the states which has shown the cooperation between NGOs and states
  • Moreover, NGOs send in reports on States which can present the different view form the report of that State because NGOs regularly seek the information across the community and society more widely
  • NGOs gain the publicity on a certain human right issue which can lead that issue to global attention and cause the international investigation or report
  • NGO can bring matters to the attention of a Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and convey their views to Committee members by indicating their interests to the secretariat and then prepare and submit their submission for the Committee when considering the State report when the report of a State is scheduled for consideration by a Committee
  • The information and data which are collected and spread by NGOs may be wider and more user friendly than the state’s. Therefore, this leads to a positive impact on human rights awareness in a State which is achieved through the effort or hard work of the NGO.

20. What are the issues with state reports in term of quantity and quality?  §

• UPR
• The reports system is often regarded as weak because it is dependent upon the will of States to comply.
  • In many instances reports, if and when submitted by States, are formal and prosaic repetition of national laws which conform to the specified norm. They may have a tendency to be biased towards the State.
• Reports of States are rarely critical evaluations of performance with honest appraisals of problems encountered.
  • Self-appraisal may be entering mainstream management practice in the developed world but it has yet to reach mainstream international law.
  • Biasness by biased thirdparty or self evaluation: deemphacize bads, while oversaying the goods
  • Solution: monitor or report by NGO or unbiased party
• It may be biased, this time against the State. The answer may lie in a more open approach with both ‘sides’ being encouraged to submit observations. States may be more honest and open about problems encountered in the knowledge that the monitoring body will also be receiving full reports from NGOs.

21. What are the problems in term of resources:  §

(1) translation cost §

Bonus point (Advantages):

• In Europe, documents are lodged in original languages yet judgments are published in all State languages. 

  • State reports made in native language of country, you have to translate it to 6 others

• The Americas and Africa have fewer official languages (although no less linguistic diversity) than Europe; thus, the problem is not so marked. 

• In the United Nations, reports must be translated into the official languages of the United Nations (Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic) Within the United Nations, Englishlanguage materials are dominating the travaux préparatoires of State reports and the treaty bodies themselves are gravitating towards the adoption of English as the lingua franca.

• Perusal of the World Wide Web reveals that the majority of material available on human rights is in the English language.

Problem: ‘a situation of dire financial stringency the resulting inflexibility: A state of serious financial tightness, inflexibility as a result will lead to devastation and, on the other hand, lead to a shift to more creative and brutal strategies to escape the unworkable rules.

Example: In Europe, English and French are spoken by most  judges, though the recent expansion of the Council of Europe into Eastern Europe has altered this. In the Americas, Spanish is widely spoken.

(2) lack of funds,  §

• The UN funding comes from the assessed contribution from each member states

• The UN human rights is considered to be 1 of the 3 pillar of the UN system, but it only gets less than 7% of the budget 

• The regular budget of The UN in 2022, has seen zero growth and this leads to the UN human rights rely heavily on voluntary contribution. The voluntary contribution make up to 62% of the whole budget 

• The highest increase of the annual amount for the UN human rights is an increase of 1.5% between 2021 to 20220. Out of all of them, only 37% were un-earmarked, which means that the voluntary contribution is flexible, efficient and fast. 

• Out of all the member states, the US contributes the most, but the Trump administration decided to cut their funding for several of the UN agencies most of them are related to peacekeeping operations. However the Biden administration has refunded some of the agencies that Trump cut off.

• When the US sees a decline in funding, China would step up to boost its commitment to the UN. And behind the US, China is the second biggest contributor to the UN. 

(3) redeploying resources §

• Funding is likely not gonna get any much better
• Human rights bodies don’t have enough resources
  • European Court of Human Rights had to go full time to keep up
  • United Nations Comittees have downsized
• How to use resources more effectively
  • a consolidation of secretarial support: reducing the amount of things to discuss and translate
  • use of automated translation facilities
  • better use/use of electronic resources

(4) streamlining the system §

• The combination of resources: financial, personnel, secretariat, and translation 
  • By establishing a single Universal Court of Human Rights 
  • Replacing the six treaty bodies with two consolidated Committees (assuming the function of reviewing state reports, and focusing on individual and inter-state complaints) => one report rather than six
  • UNCHR with only advisory jurisdiction => easily bind the decision

22. What the major problems in relation to funding in the following links? Pick up main themes and share with our friends! §

• The major problems in relation to funding are:

  • The regular budget allocated to human rights is highly limited.: Of all regular budget resources directed to these three pillars in 2021, human rights received less than 7 per cent, while the other two pillars received more than 93 per cent. The regular budget appropriation for the Office for 2022 amounts to US$ 134 million, representing just over 3 per cent of the total UN regular budgets.

  • The Trump administration sought to pare down or completely eliminate voluntary contributions to many UN programs.: The Trump administration suspended all funding for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2017, after expanding a ban on U.S. contributions to organizations that perform or promote abortions as a method of family planning. The following year, it reduced funding for the UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the WHO by about 30 percent and 20 percent, respectively. In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration announced that the United States would withdraw from the WHO completely cut funding further.**

References §

1. Chapter 10 of RSTHR-Rhona Smith Textbook on International Human Rights

• https://www.ohchr.org/en/about-us/funding-and-budget
• https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/09/1074042
• https://www.cfr.org/article/funding-united-nations-what-impact-do-us-contributions-have-un-agencies-and-programs