Human Rights: Procedures, R2P, Migrants, Abortion, and Security Council Reform
Special Procedures
Independent human rights experts are appointed to advise on specific human rights themes. Key elements include promotion and protection of human rights. A critical role is played by independent and impartial Special Rapporteurs.
- Country visits:
- Assess the human rights situation.
- Meet with people.
- Study institutional and judicial policy frameworks.
- Report first to the country, then to the Human Rights Council (HRC), with findings and recommendations.
Positives: Voice for victims, codification and elaboration of international law norms.
Negatives: Budget, paid job, time focus, independence, issuing reports, criticism, and truth.
To-Do: Proper funding, administrative support, follow-up mechanisms in place. Rapporteurs must produce accurate reports and clear recommendations.
R2P (Responsibility to Protect)
R2P is a global political commitment, first endorsed in 2005 at the World Summit. The objective is to stop genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The idea dates to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where the international community failed to respond.
Three Pillars:
- States uphold the principles of defending human rights.
- International assistance and capacity building: Help populations before crises break out, and provide support to those unable to uphold their national responsibilities to protect civilians.
- Timely and decisive response: The principle of non-intervention, with diplomatic, humanitarian, and peaceful means as the first resort.
R2P is a preventive principle that focuses on a range of crimes before they occur, with intervention as a last resort. The use of military force varies depending on context and situations, and the responsibility to intervene.
Obstacles: Reconceptualization of sovereignty (traditionally, each state is responsible for its own domestic affairs). R2P changes this concept by allowing interference when the protection of human rights is at stake. Some do not accept R2P, and countries criticize it for human rights violations, and a lack of punitive ways to address violations by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Migrants and Refugees
There is an increasing number of asylum seekers, refugees, migrants, and displaced persons due to political instability, conflict, and violence. Refugees do not have options, while migrants do. Legally speaking, they are different groups, but the same issues occur. Both groups go missing, are injured, and are abused during travel.
Missing: Individuals who cannot be found as a result of conflict, combatants, and civilians. Millions go missing because of inter-armed conflict, human rights violations, disasters, homicides, terrorism, and migration journeys. Most laws address missing persons related to armed conflict, with little space to deal with missing persons as a category worthy of specific attention.
Disappearances: Needs connection to the state, like groups connected to the state doing abductions. The UN HRC in 2006 stated family rights to be informed about missing persons, to investigate the circumstances of missing persons, and to identify burial sites, which escalates uncertainty and suffering for families. The Advisory Committee of the HRC addresses two groups: 1) those families without news, and 2) unaccounted for as a result of armed conflict.
Vulnerability: Everyone who travels increases the number of undocumented migrants, who use unusual routes to avoid detection, rely on outlaws, and are at risk. Vulnerable groups include women and children. Groups can help.
Why a lack of protection: No general system to register migrants, missing persons, and the dead. States do not cooperate, and there is a lack of information availability. There are increasing restrictive migration policies. Border controls lead to missing persons and deaths, and cooperation agreements are needed. Technical infrastructure, family support, and reporting are also needed. Bodies and DNA are important.
Abortion
39% of the population lives in countries with highly restrictive laws. Active defense of women’s rights, public health, and human rights have a positive effect on decriminalization and access to services. Despite easing legal abortion, legal strategies create barriers like counseling, waiting periods, third-party consent, and limitations on the range of abortions, and funding. Procedural barriers delay needed care, demean women as competent decision-makers, and increase health risks.
The US Roe vs. Wade decision led to a decrease in maternal mortality and unsafe abortions. US mandatory counseling and mental health and breast cancer studies say otherwise. There is no evidence of a connection between restrictions on access to abortion and increased birth rates. Women will, in one way or another, seek the service.
Ideologically and religiously motivated arguments against abortions resort to misrepresentations and avoidance of public health evidence, undermining women and human rights.
Security Council Reform
More equitable representation and increased membership are needed, reducing the number of European seats from two to one, and admitting members from the global south. Veto power is a tool of power politics during the Cold War, and the reverse side of the consensus principle.
Under present circumstances, if the institution of war is not abolished and replaced by an equal power persuasive system, it is unlikely that the world’s problems will be solved. The UN should obtain a monopoly of power and operate an international police force to enforce international law. Pretending a system of collective security while states maintain private militaries is counterproductive. UN members have failed to take steps to a disarmed and organized world under law, losing credibility.
The abolition of war demands hard limitations to national sovereignty, which nations are reluctant to accept. Sovereignty is the great impediment. The Japanese and Danish constitutions provide for limiting national sovereignty for the purpose of international cooperation and peace.
Since 2005, India has wanted to become a permanent member of the UNSC. Warlessness is a world situation with total disarmament, decisions of the ICJ work, an international police force is effective, and the veto is abolished in the SC.