The United Nations and National Human Rights Institutions

Sonia Cardenas
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Whereas international support for NHRIs in the past merely defined appropriate institutional structures and functions, today international actors are directly engaged in creating and strengthening these institutions. Support from the UN and other international organizations, both governmental and nongovernmental alike, has allowed NHRIs to take the unprecedented step of forging transgovernmental alliances and to even begin acquiring formal international standing. While students of international relations have overlooked these developments, NHRIs do signal an important innovation in global governance. (1) The emergence of these institutions marks a potentially significant step in the implementation of international human rights law. In the words of the Canadian government, NHRIs may be \"the practical link between international standards and their concrete application, the bridge between the ideal and its implementation.\" (2) Given this transformative agenda, we need a much better understanding of how international actors like the UN, which has been at the forefront of these human rights activities, actually engage in national institution building. (3) At the same time, as long as states remain the principal \"makers\" and \"breakers\" of international law, support for NHRIs may be a doubleedged phenomenon, presenting both opportunities and challenges for the local protection of human rights norms. In addressing these trends, I advance two sets of arguments. First, I contend that, contrary to conventional state-centric expectations, the UN has played a crucial role in creating and strengthening NHRIs. 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National human rights institutions can have the unintended effect of heightening social expectations, which governments are then unwilling or unable to meet; in some instances, this could lead to less rather than more human rights protection. Although I structure the article around these two central arguments, in an introductory section I survey the functions and relevance of emerging NHRIs, namely their role in implementing international norms domestically. In the remainder of the article I focus on the interplay between the UN and national institutions. Domestic Implementation of International Norms The stated objective of all governmental human rights institutions is to implement international norms domestically. Put differently, NHRJs are intended to be the permanent, local \"infrastructure\" upon which international human rights norms are built; they are not to be confused with ad hoc truth commissions or other temporary crisis-driven institutional arrangements. …","PeriodicalId":143829,"journal":{"name":"International Human Rights Monitoring Mechanisms","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2001-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"46","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Human Rights Monitoring Mechanisms","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004478886_059","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 46

Abstract

There is a new and significant development in the field of human rights: the U.N. led proliferation of national human rights institutions (NHRIs). NHRIs are government agencies whose purported aim is to implement international norms domestically. These institutions have expanded considerably since the early 1990s, quadrupling in number and appearing in almost 100 countries. What explains the diffusion of such similar institutions across diverse national contexts? In this article, I argue that the entry of this actor onto the world stage cannot be understood without examining the role of international organizations, especially the United Nations. Whereas international support for NHRIs in the past merely defined appropriate institutional structures and functions, today international actors are directly engaged in creating and strengthening these institutions. Support from the UN and other international organizations, both governmental and nongovernmental alike, has allowed NHRIs to take the unprecedented step of forging transgovernmental alliances and to even begin acquiring formal international standing. While students of international relations have overlooked these developments, NHRIs do signal an important innovation in global governance. (1) The emergence of these institutions marks a potentially significant step in the implementation of international human rights law. In the words of the Canadian government, NHRIs may be "the practical link between international standards and their concrete application, the bridge between the ideal and its implementation." (2) Given this transformative agenda, we need a much better understanding of how international actors like the UN, which has been at the forefront of these human rights activities, actually engage in national institution building. (3) At the same time, as long as states remain the principal "makers" and "breakers" of international law, support for NHRIs may be a doubleedged phenomenon, presenting both opportunities and challenges for the local protection of human rights norms. In addressing these trends, I advance two sets of arguments. First, I contend that, contrary to conventional state-centric expectations, the UN has played a crucial role in creating and strengthening NHRIs. It has done so by means of four mechanisms: standard setting, capacity building, network facilitating, and membership granting. I provide support for this general proposition by tracing UN support historically, presenting descriptive statistics, and using counterfactual reasoning. Other actors--including government agencies, human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and international organizations like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)--have contributed to these activities, especialty in terms of capacity building; but only the UN has been equipped to coordinate and legitimate the global diffusion of these national institutions. Second, drawing on the nascent experience of NHRIs, I propose that, while the creation of NHRIs is a welcome development, insofar as it serve s to embed international norms in local structures, it also can have perverse consequences. National human rights institutions can have the unintended effect of heightening social expectations, which governments are then unwilling or unable to meet; in some instances, this could lead to less rather than more human rights protection. Although I structure the article around these two central arguments, in an introductory section I survey the functions and relevance of emerging NHRIs, namely their role in implementing international norms domestically. In the remainder of the article I focus on the interplay between the UN and national institutions. Domestic Implementation of International Norms The stated objective of all governmental human rights institutions is to implement international norms domestically. Put differently, NHRJs are intended to be the permanent, local "infrastructure" upon which international human rights norms are built; they are not to be confused with ad hoc truth commissions or other temporary crisis-driven institutional arrangements. …
联合国和国家人权机构
人权领域出现了一个新的重大发展:联合国主导的国家人权机构(NHRIs)的扩散。国家人权机构是政府机构,其宗旨是在国内实施国际规范。自20世纪90年代初以来,这些机构的数量增加了四倍,出现在近100个国家。如何解释这些相似的机构在不同国家背景下的扩散?在本文中,我认为,如果不考察国际组织,特别是联合国的作用,就不能理解这个行动者进入世界舞台。过去,国际社会对国家人权机构的支持仅仅界定了适当的机构结构和职能,而今天,国际行动者直接参与创建和加强这些机构。联合国和其他国际组织(包括政府和非政府组织)的支持,使国家人权机构能够迈出前所未有的一步,建立跨政府联盟,甚至开始获得正式的国际地位。虽然国际关系专业的学生忽视了这些发展,但国家人权机构确实标志着全球治理的一项重要创新。(1)这些机构的出现标志着在执行国际人权法方面可能迈出了重要的一步。用加拿大政府的话说,国家人权机构可能是“国际标准与其具体应用之间的实际联系,理想与其实施之间的桥梁”。(2)鉴于这一变革性议程,我们需要更好地了解像联合国这样一直处于这些人权活动前沿的国际行为体如何实际参与国家机构建设。(3)与此同时,只要国家仍然是国际法的主要“制定者”和“破坏者”,对国家人权机构的支持可能是一种双刃剑现象,对地方人权规范的保护既带来机遇,也带来挑战。在讨论这些趋势时,我提出了两套论点。首先,我认为,与传统的以国家为中心的期望相反,联合国在创建和加强国家人权机构方面发挥了至关重要的作用。它通过四种机制实现了这一目标:标准制定、能力建设、网络促进和成员授予。我通过追溯联合国的历史支持、提供描述性统计数据和使用反事实推理来支持这一一般性命题。其他行为者——包括政府机构、人权非政府组织(ngo)和欧洲安全与合作组织(欧安组织)等国际组织——为这些活动做出了贡献,特别是在能力建设方面;但只有联合国有能力协调这些国家机构的全球扩散并使其合法化。其次,根据国家人权机构的初步经验,我提出,虽然国家人权机构的创建是一项受欢迎的发展,但就其有助于将国际规范嵌入地方结构而言,它也可能产生不良后果。国家人权机构可能产生意想不到的效果,即提高政府不愿或无法满足的社会期望;在某些情况下,这可能导致更少而不是更多的人权保护。虽然我围绕这两个中心论点构建了文章,但在引言部分,我概述了新兴国家人权机构的功能和相关性,即它们在国内实施国际规范方面的作用。在本文的其余部分,我将重点讨论联合国与国家机构之间的相互作用。所有政府人权机构的既定目标是在国内实施国际准则。换句话说,国家人权机构的目的是成为永久性的、地方性的“基础设施”,在此基础上建立国际人权准则;它们不应与特别真相委员会或其他由危机推动的临时性机构安排相混淆。…
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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