The human rights system offers important tools and mechanisms to tackle major global threats. But amid the challenges of a polarized world, there is both a need and an opportunity for fresh human rights leadership to emerge.
The world is confronting a complex array of challenges and the interconnections between them are becoming ever clearer. Climate change and environmental degradation threaten to make parts of the planet uninhabitable and are likely to cause many people to migrate in search of a more sustainable existence. Global inequality continues to widen, while growing economic pressures threaten social and political instability in many countries. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and escalating rivalry between the US and China point to dangerous fissures in the current world order. Nuclear threats have loomed larger in the past year than any time since the height of the Cold War. Populism and autocracy, propelled partly by disinformation, are undermining democracies and international cooperation, with many negative implications for human rights. Most of the world’s young people now live in countries historically impoverished by colonialism, and a discourse about the racial inequity encoded into international relations continues to grow.
The human rights system offers important resources for tackling this morass of challenges, even if it is beset with cynicism. Human rights have been carefully elaborated by states over decades, have intellectual depth and are now firmly embedded in the norms, laws and institutions of the multilateral system. No alternative framework boasts the same sophistication and longevity or has been subject to the same degree of elaboration and scrutiny.
However, the human rights framework functions within a web of international relationships in which the vulnerability of the framework to being politicized can counteract its strength. At a time when bold and proactive human rights diplomacy is needed, this research paper assesses the prospects for diplomacy in a context of changing global politics and multiple crises. Despite a troubling level of polarization between rival powers, there is an opportunity for a richer and more diverse human rights agenda to emerge in the near term. However, the full potential in this new agenda may only be realized if the world’s leading powers are prepared to change course.
What is human rights diplomacy?
This paper takes a broad view of human rights diplomacy as the interactions primarily among states on human rights, grounded in the normative and legal system of treaties and mechanisms that form the international human rights system. Human rights diplomacy takes multiple forms bilaterally and multilaterally, at many different levels, encompassing private discussions and public statements. The paper focuses mainly on diplomacy within the multilateral system, particularly the human rights institutions of the UN. The role of non-state actors, including businesses and sub-state entities, is also relevant but outside the scope of this paper.
Human rights diplomacy has existed in various forms for over 75 years, since human rights were inscribed in the 1945 UN Charter and then articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. It was diplomacy that enabled a series of treaties to be drafted and adopted during the second half of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st – in particular, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) adopted in 1966. Together with the UDHR, these treaties form the International Bill of Rights.
However, human rights diplomacy is a slippery concept. Diplomatic engagement on human rights is inevitably secondary to broader considerations of national interest, and subject to shifting calculations of whether it is worth the political cost. It is also a paradox: while human rights are grounded in agreed norms that are not (in theory) open to renegotiation, diplomacy is pragmatic, fluid and responsive to the demands of realpolitik. The two are not easy companions.
In a 2011 book, the human rights scholar and practitioner Michael O’Flaherty defined human rights diplomacy as ‘the utilisation of diplomatic negotiation and persuasion for the specific purpose of promoting and protecting human rights’, while George Ulrich characterized it as a set of activities aiming ‘to enlarge the sphere in which human rights functions as the operative norm.’ Both definitions quite reasonably assume a good-faith engagement by states and other actors seeking to advance human rights. But human rights diplomacy can also be a way of deflecting criticism, constraining progress or instrumentalizing human rights for other purposes. In her preface to the same book, former UN deputy high commissioner for human rights Kang Kyung-wha sounded a sceptical note by asking: ‘Is it diplomacy in the service of human rights, or is it human rights as a tool of diplomacy in pursuit of foreign policy goals?’
While human rights and diplomacy exist in a paradoxical relationship, that relationship is an inevitable and necessary one. By design, human rights belong within a multilateral architecture. They make a claim to be universal, and are articulated chiefly within a set of treaties agreed between states that establish a standard for acceptable behaviour. In the absence of supranational arbitration (for the most part), human rights compliance depends, at least partly, on a kind of voluntary mutual accountability between states, which takes place largely through the mechanisms and institutions of the multilateral system. In this imperfect system, diplomacy matters greatly – the ability to forge alliances; build consensus; bridge differences; engage inter-governmental organizations both global and regional; make choices about private and public interventions; establish norms and laws; and encourage compliance with them are all part of the task.
Time for renewal
As the world grapples with a set of profound and overlapping challenges, there are few signs of any grand vision for the future of human rights. Meanwhile, many of the most egregious and complex human rights crises in the world seem worryingly intractable. Human rights norms and tools offer ways to address each of these crises. But it remains in question whether, and how, human rights diplomacy can respond effectively.
Demand for human rights change remains strong, with many major protest movements emerging at the local, national and global levels over the past decade, until the COVID-19 pandemic quieted much of the world. But the appetite of these movements has not been matched by political will among the most powerful states. The role of civil society in the human rights system has also been diminished: the proliferation of monitoring organizations and a growing sophistication in their methodologies have supplied a wealth of information about human rights violations, but those organizations face increasing barriers to operating freely in many countries, as well as constraints within multilateral institutions including the UN.
Human rights diplomacy has long been conditioned by the balance of power among the most influential states. With US–China rivalry still taking shape, that balance is in flux. In the US, commitment to multilateralism itself has become an increasingly partisan matter, and the durability of US commitment to the human rights system remains uncertain. China has become more active in attempting to reshape the human rights space to match its own vision for the future. These dynamics, together with the effects of Russia’s war on Ukraine, all set important parameters within which the human rights system has to operate. The normative framework continues to expand, but the overriding concerns among many practitioners, including those interviewed for this paper, are simply to preserve and defend the system as it currently exists and prevent further setbacks.
But in a world where global power is becoming increasingly diffuse, and where there is no single dominant vision for human rights, there may also be opportunities for progress. Despite the pressures created by polarization between great powers, there is potential for human rights leadership to become more diverse than ever before. Taking initiative in this context is not easy: there are few obvious benefits and many risks, with the incentives stacked heavily against less powerful countries. Yet it is perhaps these countries and the alliances between them that can offer a way through the current impasse and provide the human rights system with new sources of inspiration.
About this paper
The aim of this paper is to provide diplomats and other practitioners with an overview of the most significant current trends and challenges in human rights diplomacy, and to make recommendations on how to strengthen the efficacy of the multilateral system for the protection and fulfilment of human rights.
The following chapters move from the past to the present and conclude with proposals for the future. Chapter 2 traces important historical currents that have shaped the present and places the subsequent chapters in context. Chapters 3 to 6 discuss four of the most significant dynamics in human rights diplomacy today: a crippling state of polarization between rival paradigms of human rights; a systemic challenge posed by China; a turn towards targeted economic sanctions by wealthy countries; and signs of a more diverse human rights agenda emerging – mainly from the Global South. Finally, Chapter 7 offers a set of propositions and recommendations for how diplomacy can play an important role in advancing human rights in future.
