With power comes responsibility: Human rights protection in United Nations sanctions policy

Abstract

The ability to violate and the duty to protect human rights have traditionally been ascribed to states. Yet, since international organizations increasingly take decisions that directly affect individuals, it has been alleged that they, too, have human rights obligations. Against this background, we can witness a trend among international organizations establishing provisions to prevent human rights violations and to enable individuals to hold them accountable for such violations. This can be seen as a specific manifestation of a more general trend that has been described as the spread of good governance standards to, or the constitutionalization of, international organizations. The purpose of this article is to reveal the mechanisms that can account for the introduction of human rights protection provisions in international organizations. The empirical basis of the article forms a case study on the evolution of such provisions in United Nations sanctions policy. I first develop a conceptual framework that draws on diffusion mechanisms that have been used to explain the spread of norms and institutional design among states and to trace reform processes in international organizations. The empirical analysis suggests that shaming, defiance, litigation and instances of learning can account for the advancement of human rights protection provisions in United Nations sanctions policy: the Security Council was exposed to and responded to various forms of pressure from a variety of different actors. At the same time, it was approached with arguments concerning why it should institute reforms and advice in terms of how such reforms should look and engaged in a learning process.

The Legitimacy of the UN Security Council: Evidence from Recent General Assembly Debates

“…Scholars have also argued that the Council faces a legitimacy crisis due to its “inability to constrain great power use of force, particularly by the United States” (Morris and Wheeler :214). Finally, concerning negative side‐effects of Council action, the Security Council has been accused of being responsible for human rights violations, especially in relation to the practice of blacklisting terror suspects (Heupel ).…”

Reflective practices at the Security Council: Children and armed conflict and the three United Nations

“…This agenda-setting period of CAAC has to be seen within its historical-normative context, associated with the increasing prominence of global human rights. From the 1990s onwards, the UNSC gradually accepted a human rights component on its agenda and began to question ‘absolute’ understandings of sovereignty ( Genser and Ugarte, 2014 ; Heupel, 2011 ). The two ad hoc tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda established by the UNSC illustrate this development.…”

Political secrecy in Europe: crisis management and crisis exploitation

“…This is not to say that authority will always be legitimate or that authority-holders may not pursue parochial rather than public interests. Yet strongly and permanently illegitimate authority is unlikely to be stable and sustainable for it invites non-compliance, shifting, and normative backlash (Heupel 2013;Heupel and Zürn 2017). Hence, we should assume an endogenous preference for authority-holders to be legitimacy-seekers and thus to work in the public interest.…”