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Todd
Howland is the former Director of the
Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights
and he has also worked on numerous human
rights missions with the United Nations,
the Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights, the Commission of the
European Communities, the Carter Center
Human Rights Program and many other
programs. |
One place where a
break from the past is needed relates to how the organization views its own
human rights obligations.
The UN creates human
rights law through painstaking efforts in various committees and at numerous
conferences. Oddly, it ignores human
rights law in many of its operational activities, most notably in its peace
missions.
The UN pontificates about achieving
sustainable peace only through respecting human rights for all and through human
security, but the organization ignores these sound principles in the way it
structures and fields its operations.
Why does this happen?
It relates to some outdated notion of who is bound by human rights law.
Bizarrely, human rights and humanitarian law are discussed and debated
intensely at the UN before the UN intervenes, to determine whether it must or
simply should take the step of intervention.
But once the UN – acting on behalf of
its Member States – decides to intervene, the relevance of human rights law
basically disappears.
The lack of integration of insights
about how to achieve sustainable peace obtained from empirical observation and
rigorous study is best explained through how money flows within the UN,
bureaucratic turf battles and dysfunctional limits created by Member States
placed on UN action.
These limits are driven by domestic
politics and often undermine the effectiveness of UN operations.
As
odd as it may sound, political and bureaucratic concerns trump human rights
obligations in the organization of international missions, mainly because
Member
States
and UN bureaucrats don’t think they are bound by human rights law in the
organization and operation of an intervention.
This
odd position is, of course, also the case in bilateral efforts.
The New
Secretary-General should make it clear that human rights law needs to be
followed in the international community’s responses to conflict and in
measurement of a mission’s accomplishments.
The UN must move from
vague efforts to “integrate and mainstream” human rights to understanding
them as binding legal standards.
To get there we must
recognize that human rights obligations apply extraterritorially and that more
than one state (e.g., both the host state and those Member States involved in
the peace mission) can have obligations to the same individual.
Such a notion is fully
consistent with human rights law as well as general principles of law.
The application of the
human rights framework in peace missions is both practical, given it will
enhance performance of field operations, and mandated, given Member States
don’t leave their human rights obligations at their borders when acting
internationally, even if acting through an agent – like the UN.
The present UN mission
to
Haiti
is a clear example of the desperate need for a human rights framework and the
current marginalization of human rights in peace missions.
Blue helmets were sent
to
Haiti
even though the main problem was not a civil or even a hot war.
The main problems were
poverty, a long history of bad governance, and weak institutions (especially
those needed to protect the rights of the Haitian people).
The idea of a
one-size- fits-all mission comes from structural problems (some related to how
money flows), a perceived lack of options, and the lack of accountability of
peace missions to improving the human rights situation; this needs to become
part of the restructuring agenda.
Former
US
Ambassador to the UN John Bolton has a point: the UN and its
Member
States
need to be held accountable.
Although UN reform and accountability
are overdue, more influence from a
US
delegation that confuses accountability with appeasement and democracy with
friendship is destined to make the UN as ineffective as it has been in
Haiti
.
It is overdue for Member States to take
their human rights obligations seriously and recognize that human rights law
provides a framework for government action inside and outside their own
countries.
Thus, peace missions
need to be conceptualized, staffed, financed and implemented and success
measured based on international human rights law.
Accepting and applying
human rights law to peacekeeping operations will trump operational
dysfuctionalities and allow the UN to cohere its academic understanding of
achieving sustainable peace with the operations supposedly designed to achieve
it.
It is a change the new
Secretary-General cannot afford not make.
ToddHowland@MaximsNews.com
~~~~~
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