Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Politicisation of the Human Rights Council

Freedman, Rosa; Houghton, Ruth

doi:10.1093/hrlr/ngx027

Cited by 40 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Nevertheless, the UPR has been subject to concerns on its vulnerability to political influences (McMahon & Ascherio 2012;Cochrane & McNeilly 2013;Freedman & Houghton 2017). By examining dyadic relationships, Terman & Voeten (2018) confirm the presence of a politicized, selective process where states are more lenient towards strategic relationships and that their recommendations are accepted more often than identical recommendations from states with fewer strategic ties.…”

Section: Relational Mechanism Of the Uprmentioning

confidence: 89%

Power, Politicization, and Network Positions : Explaining State Participation in the UPR

Bae¹

2018

kjis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Review (UPR) ensures formal equality among participating member states. However, previous literature emphasizes the interference of state interest and politics in undermining the universal peer evaluation mechanism. In this article, I argue that while the UPR shows certain bias in state behavior for providing recommendations, the UPR otherwise functions according to its purpose of condemning human rights violations. I find that member states' human rights index scores and the level of democracy correlate with the number of recommendations received and the betweenness centrality measures. First, I apply social network analysis (SNA) on state interaction in the UPR literature enabling inter-network comparisons with international trade relations, military dispute, and alliance relationships. The QAP analyses depict that the UPR network has a low association with the military dispute network and the alliance network. Second, individual level analyses demonstrate that states with higher national capabilities and a greater amount of trade exports are more likely to provide recommendations. Nonetheless, higher human rights index levels lead to more recommendation providing activity while smaller in magnitude. However, the amount of recommendations received by a state suggests that states with low human rights records and low levels of democracy receive more recommendations. Furthermore, the betweenness centrality measures highly correlate with the human rights index and the level of democracy implying that the general standard of human rights influences the degree of state centrality in the UPR network. This study acknowledges the presence of politicization among states in providing recommendations, but also ensures that the UPR is shaming states according to its main purpose in criticizing the human rights violations of non-compliers.

show abstract

Section: Relational Mechanism Of the Uprmentioning

confidence: 89%

Power, Politicization, and Network Positions : Explaining State Participation in the UPR

Bae¹

2018

kjis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Take politicization, for example, there are some undesirable phenomena in the Commission, such as repetitious statements, bloc voting, and vote-bartering. [10] The several States accused of severe violations of human rights had become the member of the Commission, such as Sudan, Cuba, Libya, and Zimbabwe. Thus the Human Rights Council requires member states to get the seat by election, eliminates permanent members by not allowing the second reelection, and allows non-governmental organizations to become observers.…”

Section: Unhrcmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Russia's incursions in Georgia and South Ossetia, and the issue of human rights in Tibet before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, were not mentioned in the Council for the same politicization reason. [12] On the other hand, the issue of Israel and Syria has received too much attention in the Council compared with similar crises. For example, the issue of the occupied Palestinian territories, as it relates to Israel, received too much attention in the council's early meetings, while human rights in North Korea and Congo were ignored.…”

Section: Unhrcmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reform of International Organizations in an Era of Chinese and US leadership

Wang¹,

Xu²,

Zou³

2022

Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

International institutions work hard to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by implementing multilateral cooperating systems. Over the past decade of Chinese and United States leadership, however, organizations like UNSC, UNHRC and the WTO faced many challenges. This paper will analyse the structures of these organizations and present solutions to the problem that plagued them. The possible reforms for these three institutions, respectively, are to repair the relationship between states through future collaboration, equalize the representation power of each state by making the operation transparent, and protect the common principality with an independent enforcement body. In conclusion, we should reform these institutions as well as protect them from selfish exploitation from nations.

show abstract

“…Thus, not the policy scope of an IGO but the aggregate norms of its group members are constitutive for its human rights culture. For instance, major human rights organizations such as the UN Human Rights Council may have comparatively weak human rights cultures given that various human rights abusers are among its members (Freedman and Houghton, 2017). In contrast, an IGO that is unrelated to human rights such as the International Organisation of Vine and Wine might have a stronger human rights culture given that its members have comparatively positive human rights records.…”

Section: 'Human Rights Cultures' In Igosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instrumental or intrinsic? Human rights alignment in intergovernmental organizations

Weyrauch

Steinert

2021

Rev Int Organ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Why do states’ human rights records converge with co-members in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)? This study provides new insights on whether interactions in IGOs have the capacity to genuinely transform state preferences or whether norm diffusion is a consequence of instrumental processes. We leverage information about the timing of human rights alignment to disentangle intrinsic from instrumental motives. We hypothesize that instrumental motives find expression in pre-membership alignment and reversions to original normative standards after IGO exits. Intrinsic motives lead to gradual alignment during IGO membership and result in stable normative changes beyond IGO exits. Using varying-slopes, varying intercepts models, we investigate the distance on human rights indices between individual states and IGO means. While we find evidence for systematic convergence during IGO membership, no significant changes occur before and after IGO membership. Testing alignment of different physical integrity rights, we find no evidence for instrumental shifts to clandestine repression during IGO membership. Overall, the results suggest that norm alignment in IGOs is at least not exclusively instrumentally motivated. Our findings support constructivist arguments on state interests and suggest that IGOs are capable of transforming states’ human rights related preferences.

show abstract

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Politicisation of the Human Rights Council

Cited by 40 publications

References 0 publications

Power, Politicization, and Network Positions : Explaining State Participation in the UPR

Power, Politicization, and Network Positions : Explaining State Participation in the UPR

Reform of International Organizations in an Era of Chinese and US leadership

Instrumental or intrinsic? Human rights alignment in intergovernmental organizations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About