Quick summary The 54th regular session of the Human Rights Council (HRC54) was held from Monday 11th September to Friday 13th October 2023. On 11 September, the High Commissioner Volker Türk opened HRC54 by presenting a global update on the situation of human rights in the world. In his intervention, the High Commissioner focused on the links between development and human rights and referred to several situations around the world that raise human rights concerns. This oral update provided the basis for the general debate under Item 2 on 12 and 13 September. During the session, the High Commis ..read more

On 10 October 2023, the UN General Assembly (GA) convened in New York to elect 15 new members of the Human Rights Council for the term 2024-2026. One key question arising from the election, as every year, is whether voting members of the GA were guided when casting their ballots by bilateral considerations or by human rights principles – in particular the criteria for election and membership set down in GA resolution 60/251. To answer this question objectively, it is instructive to compare the human rights records and commitments of incoming members (as measured against the criteria for electi ..read more

The United Nations’ top human rights body is facing a test. Its outcome will have major implications for its credibility. This October, the Human Rights Council (HRC) might readmit Russia, which it suspended just more than a year ago, as a member. At the opening of the next UN General Assembly session, all 193 UN member states, including 54 African states, will vote to choose new HRC members. For Eastern Europe, three candidates will compete for two seats: Russia will face the much smaller Albania and Bulgaria. Given its continued war of aggression against an independent na ..read more

We are living in ‘an age of massive concentration of wealth, and unprecedented inequalities,’ an ‘abyss [has opened] between rich and poor [that] harms everyone.’ With these words, pronounced in his opening global update at the 54th session of the Human Rights Council, High Commissioner Volker Türk cast the spotlight on inequality, an issue that has been gaining ground in the human rights agenda since the adoption of the SDGs, and particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Türk stressed the paradoxical nature of our age: wealth is massively concentrated within a small percent ..read more

September will mark one year since Volker Türk’s appointment as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, after his predecessor, Michelle Bachelet, chose not to continue for a second term (no High Commissioner has served out two full terms). It is fair to say that the choice of Türk, widely predicted by UN insiders due to his close relationship with the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, was met with a mixed reaction from the human rights community. Many Western States and NGOs, which have long pushed for High Commissioners to be ‘global human rights advocates’ – i.e., individuals who emphas ..read more

Quick summary The 53rd regular session of the Human Rights Council (HRC53) was held from Monday 19 June to Friday 14 July 2023. On 11 and 12 July 2023, an urgent debate was convened to ‘discuss the alarming rise in premeditated and public acts of religious hatred as manifested by recurrent desecration of the Holy Quran in some European and other countries.’ The voting on draft  resolution 53/L.23 on the ‘countering religious hatred constituting incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence’ took place on Wednesday 12 July when it was adopted by vote (28-12-7). The resolution reques ..read more

On 11th July 2023, during the 53rd session of the Human Rights Council, which opened on June 19, 2023, an urgent debate was convened to ‘discuss the alarming rise in premeditated and public acts of religious hatred as manifested by recurrent desecration of the Holy Quran in some European and other countries.’ The urgent debate was requested in an official letter on 3rd July 2023 from Pakistan on behalf of member States of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) addressed to the President of the Human Rights Council. On 5th July, the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Pakistan to ..read more

On 11 July Ambassador Alexander Maisuradze, Permanent Representative of Georgia to the UN in Geneva, delivered a cross-regional statement at the 53rd session of the Human Rights Council calling on the body to assume a leadership role in the global reinvigoration of democracy. The statement, led by a group of main sponsors from Eastern Europe (Georgia, Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine), Africa (Gambia and Malawi), Asia-Pacific (Fiji), and Latin America (Costa Rica), argued that human rights and democracy are interdependent and mutually reinforcing, and thus the present ‘democratic crisis is, at he ..read more

For the past decade, the Human Rights Council has, at regular intervals, grappled with the question of how to make its work more efficient, including through the rationalisation of initiatives, mandates, general debates, and panels, and through ‘technical fixes’ such as reducing speaking times. These efficiency drives have tended to come as a consequence of sporadic yet growing concern that the Council’s programme of work is becoming unmanageable, especially for smaller delegations (as well as for conference services). During this time many proposals have been tabled and debated. Some have bee ..read more

On 16-17 May, the Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe’s 46 members met at the Council’s Fourth Summit in Reykjavík to discuss the human rights impacts of current challenges, including the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis and the development of new technologies. The Summit concluded with the adoption of the Reykjavík Declaration, which laid out the Council’s commitment to strengthen the organisation in the fields of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, and to develop tools to tackle emerging challenges in the areas of technology and the environment ..read more