In a highly polarized multilateral system, states seeking to preserve human rights gains – or even reinvigorate diplomacy as a force for progress – must increase their level of ambition and support diverse leadership if they are to address long-standing challenges.
For as long as there is a human rights framework and a functioning multilateral system, the field of human rights diplomacy will exist, and it will remain messy. Human rights diplomacy has the potential to continue developing norms and international law, and encouraging or incentivizing compliance and non-regression. States should continue to champion accountability despite the difficulty. Yet much of the task of human rights diplomacy is about keeping space open, protecting progress and negotiating conflicts along the way. At present, human rights exist in a paradoxical situation whereby they are deeply embedded in the multilateral system but enjoy little sustained major power support. This situation creates opportunity as well as vulnerability.
The world is grappling with serious, complex and mutually reinforcing challenges. Climate change and environmental degradation, widening global inequality and macroeconomic pressures, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the growing rivalry between the US and China have all brought the world to a dangerous moment. Meanwhile, protest movements on issues of human rights have re-emerged in many places as the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided. This is a time when principled leadership and careful diplomacy are urgently needed, including in the human rights arena.
In this context, this chapter sets out a series of propositions – addressed mainly to states engaged in the multilateral human rights system – with a view to strengthening the prospects for diplomacy to make a more transformative impact on the state of human rights in the world.
China’s systemic challenge should be met with a global strategy focused on economic development and addressing inequality
States concerned by the challenge that China poses to the norms and institutions of the human rights system should respond not only with direct criticism and pushback on China’s domestic record, but by making an alternative proposition to countries within China’s network of allies.
This approach must be rooted in an acknowledgment that China makes a convincing appeal to many Global South countries in particular – through its focus on state sovereignty and non-intervention, its emphasis on the right to development, and its model of economic success with no democratic accountability and limited respect for civil and political rights.
Other wealthy or influential states can rival China’s appeal by listening and being responsive to the breadth of issues that Global South countries are seeking to raise via the multilateral system. A narrow focus on civil and political rights linked to democracy is insufficient. Instead, there needs to be widespread acceptance of a broader human rights agenda for the future – taking in issues of climate and the environment, the legacies of colonialism and inequality, and focusing on themes that cut across human rights and the SDGs.
Global North countries should therefore shift from a human rights discourse centred on civil and political rights and democracy towards a broader discourse encompassing economic, social and cultural rights and acknowledging the fundamental need for economic development. Backing up this shift with a combination of financial investment, development assistance, climate finance, and debt relief would demonstrate a serious commitment to reducing economic inequality. This shift must inform both its private diplomacy and public statements, including in processes such as the UPR. Within the UN human rights system, Global North countries should provide political and financial support for mandates focusing on economic, social and cultural rights.
Wealthy countries should also push for the IMF and other international financial institutions to acknowledge their role in the fulfilment of human rights and advocate for them to engage in relevant discussions, particularly where they are able to increase the available resources for poorer countries to fulfil economic rights.
Adopting such an approach does entail political risk for Global North countries, which will have to confront their own historic responsibilities in these areas. But it is essential if those countries wish to show that a system based on human rights (and democracy) can also deliver sustainable development and higher living standards – and ultimately a more equitable international order.
Polarization can be confronted, at least in part, through building and supporting diverse coalitions
In a context in which major power rivals espouse their own narrow version of human rights to the exclusion of the other, the concept of human rights as indivisible risks being lost. The essence of human rights lies neither in civil and political rights, nor in economic, social and cultural rights, but rather in the interrelationship between them. To reduce human rights to democracy vs development is to lose that perspective. States must not therefore submit to the inevitability of polarization.
There are few mechanisms available to negotiate growing polarization, but it represents a serious challenge for the human rights system which states must address. It would take a deliberate effort from multiple states to make an impact in doing so. Global North states can achieve such impact by, where possible, seeking to support multilateral initiatives led by smaller states including those in the Global South. The LMDC cannot be left to advance the inequality agenda within the human rights system alone.
Diverse coalitions offer a potential way through the current polarization, but securing them will require states to take bold steps instead of retreating to safe territory. States on different sides must look beyond framing and signposting to find ways of engaging with the substance of each other’s concerns, with an openness to evolving new concepts or proposals and building common positions. In doing so, states may need to use more discreet forums for discussion outside the spotlight of the formal processes of the UN.
In particular, fresh thinking about human rights as a pathway to economic development is needed. There is also a need for further good-faith engagement in relevant normative innovations addressing major global challenges, such as the elaboration of a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
States should acknowledge failures, develop consistency and uphold institutions
Diplomacy offers few incentives for states to embrace their own failure, but critical self-reflection ought to be part of the healthy functioning of a successful human rights system. However, self-aggrandizing narratives (for which Global North countries face criticism from Global South countries), and China’s habit of flooding its UPRs with state delegations willing to make statements of praise, undermine the functioning of that system. States need to take responsibility for confronting their past abuses and failures with equanimity and set an example of how they would like to see other states engage with the system.
Moreover, a consistent approach to the many policy areas that human rights cut across would ensure that the human rights agenda in individual states’ foreign policy is consistent with their domestic policy and practice. A concerted effort to confront the basis for accusations of hypocrisy would put Global North states in a stronger position to make human rights demands of others and allow them to deploy a greater range of tools in doing so. Proactive acknowledgements of past colonialism and its relationship to present inequality and climate change would be symbolically significant as a step towards more open discussion of these issues.
Resistance to accountability and institutional selectivity seriously undermine the credibility of states in seeking to make human rights-based criticisms of others. The US’s failure to ratify the ICESCR or the Rome Statute and its resistance to accountability for abuses committed in the context of past military interventions are striking examples of this, which the US should take steps to address.
States wishing to maintain credibility in the multilateral human rights system also need to invest domestically in making the case for the international institutions to which they belong. By threatening to withdraw from specific human rights mechanisms, governments such as that in the UK weaken the credibility of the state as an actor in human rights diplomacy. Other states must remind such governments of this.
Standards for unilateral sanctions regimes must be strengthened and clarified
It should not be left solely to those states subject to sanctions (or those who fear sanctions) to push for the elaboration of tighter standards around sanctions regimes. Rather, sanctions-issuing states should show that their sanction designations are informed by robust, transparent processes and engage substantively with questions of legality and due process. They should also ensure that the criteria for lifting sanctions are articulated precisely and are based on human rights laws and norms.
There is currently no international process through which this could happen, as multilateral human rights-based discussions about unilateral sanctions largely take the form of sanctioned states and their allies pushing back against sanctions-issuing states. In this polarized context, legitimate critiques risk being lost. States with Magnitsky legislation should therefore consider establishing a forum in which they are able to discuss and agree collective standards around the human rights issues raised by unilateral sanctions.
New models are needed for the prevention of mass atrocity crimes
While the R2P doctrine and Human Rights Up Front agenda have floundered, the need for a rejuvenated system of conflict prevention and civilian protection grounded in human rights remains urgent. This needs to be informed by lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as civil conflict in Ethiopia and Myanmar, among others.
In the context of UNSC deadlock, UNGA can play an important role. The ongoing initiative to draft an international convention on crimes against humanity would further strengthen the normative framework around mass atrocity crimes. More broadly, proposals made by Pablo de Greiff and Adama Dieng in 2018 called for a ‘comprehensive framework’ encompassing a breadth of measures that would contribute to the prevention of atrocities. Their proposals also revived certain elements of Human Rights Up Front, including holistic country-level analyses by the UN system on conflict vulnerability. This concept of a framework approach encompassing human rights needs to be championed by the UN secretary-general and carried forward by willing states.
The prevention agenda is strongly linked to accountability. In the context of Russia’s war on Ukraine, multiple parallel investigative mechanisms aimed at delivering accountability need to deliver results. This is of high importance for the future credibility of the system, and will require sustained political will and co-operation among many states.
A better funding solution must be found for the UN human rights system
Lack of resourcing for the UN human rights system relative to other parts of the UN is a perennial problem that lingers unaddressed, and which seems to have been accepted as immutable. The growing reliance of OHCHR on voluntary contributions to fund its core work places it in an increasingly precarious position. Although the prospects for change in the near term seem remote, states need to champion this agenda and seek a more sustainable, long-term funding solution, rather than leaving OHCHR to fight its own corner indefinitely.
The important role of civil society needs to be upheld
Open engagement with civil society on the part of states would significantly enrich the prospects for fulfilling each of the previous proposals, and therefore the prospects for more effective human rights diplomacy in the future. Civil society organizations play a crucial role across the full spectrum of human rights work, from monitoring and reporting to service delivery and policy innovation. It is essential that their role is protected, including by facilitating access to multilateral institutions and strengthening recourse in the case of reprisals. The UN secretary-general must maintain a structured engagement with civil society organizations concerned with human rights, while also consistently and publicly condemning threats or attacks against civil society representatives to facilitate their fulsome engagement in human rights diplomacy.
