Week 14

ROUNDTABLE: THE FUTURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The Future of Human Rights:
A View from the United Nations
Andrew Gilmour*

Ever since the Charter of the United Nations was signed in , humanrights have constituted one of its three pillars, along with peace and de-velopment. As noted in a dictum coined during the World Summit of
: “There can be no peace without development, no development without
peace, and neither without respect for human rights.” But while progress has
been made in all three domains, it is with respect to human rights that the orga-

nization’s performance has experienced some of its greatest shortcomings. Not co-
incidentally, the human rights pillar receives only a fraction of the resources
enjoyed by the other two—a mere  percent of the general budget.
The spring of  saw the twentieth anniversary of one of the two emblematic

failures of the United Nations: the genocide in Rwanda in April . Two

weeks after the killings began, the Security Council reduced the number of peace-
keepers in the country to just a tenth of the mission’s original ,. Had UN
peacekeepers been kept in place and authorized to take action, it might have
been possible to save many of the , people killed over the following twelve

weeks. Next year will mark the similarly tragic anniversary of the  genocide at
Srebrenica, where—massively outnumbered, bereft of air cover, and finally over-
run by Bosnian Serb forces—UN peacekeepers were gulled into handing over
thousands of men and boys to soldiers who promptly carried out the bloodiest
mass execution in Europe since World War II.

“Never again,” intoned various leaders of the international community after
Rwanda and Srebrenica, and they meant it sincerely. UN Secretary-General Kofi

*Andrew Gilmour is Director of Political, Peacekeeping, Humanitarian, and Human Rights Affairs in the
Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General. The views expressed in this article are his own and should not
be seen as representing those of the United Nations.

Ethics & International Affairs, , no.  (), pp. –.
©  Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
doi:./S

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Annan commissioned two powerful reports in , one on each of those tragedies,
which unsparingly pointed out where responsibility lay within the UN system for fail-
ing to respond to these atrocity crimes, and which drew lessons from these disasters
in order to avoid future ones. But just a decade later, in early , several hundred
thousand civilians found themselves hemmed into a shrinking area in northeastern

Sri Lanka. From the south and west came the advancing Sri Lankan army; to the
east and north lay the sea. In their midst were the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE). Unlike in Rwanda and Bosnia, in Sri Lanka the United Nations
did not have troops on the ground, and its presence in that country was primarily

to address development issues—not issues of politics or human rights. Over the fol-
lowing months the Sri Lankan army relentlessly shelled the region, and every hospital
and medical facility within the area was hit. Meanwhile, the LTTE prevented anyone
from fleeing, shooting those that tried, and concealed their fighting positions among
civilians. As many as , people are thought to have died over a six-month period.

A number of committed individual UN staff members did everything they
thought possible to alleviate the suffering of the Sri Lankan population, and to pre-
vent the worst from happening. Moved by reports that the organization as a whole
could have done a lot better to protect human rights and prevent atrocity crimes
there, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon set up an Internal Review Panel to look

into UN actions during the final stages of the conflict. The panel reported back in
, describing a “systemic failure” of UN action extending across the UN’s var-
ious departments and agencies, at both the field and Headquarters level, and
reaching to UN member states. After immediately making the report public,

the Secretary-General asked his Deputy, Jan Eliasson, to identify ways to imple-
ment the panel’s recommendations on improving the UN’s response in future sit-
uations. The result of this directive was an internal document that became known
as the “Rights up Front Action Plan,” adopted by the Secretary-General in
September . Since it is strongly hoped and believed that the approaches out-

lined in this plan will become embedded in UN policies, actions, and culture—
thereby helping to ensure that the UN response will be more effective in the fu-
ture—it is worth examining some of the central points contained in the plan.

Rights Up Front Action Plan

Rights up Front takes a broad approach to the protection of populations, based on
states’ obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law. Those

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involved in formulating the initiative avoided getting into what was seen as an un-
productive debate on the distinction between the “protection of civilians” and the
“protection of human rights,” as Rights up Front is committed to both. After all,
in many instances civilians have been subjected to egregious human rights viola-
tions amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes, while at the same

time facing man-made humanitarian emergencies. Civilians must be protected
from both. Syria is a prime example, with citizens subjected to detention and tor-
ture on a massive scale, as well as to rape, summary executions, and forced disap-
pearances. Tens of thousands of civilians live virtually under siege, with no food or

medical supplies allowed into their areas. In such situations of simultaneous
human rights and humanitarian emergency, the relevant professionals on both
fronts need to work in a common effort and avoid putting one above the other.
Rights up Front is designed with this in mind—a system-wide UN commitment
to engage in timely and effective prevention and response.

Preventing serious human rights violations is central to the purposes of the
United Nations and must always be a priority. The plan proposes a single mecha-
nism for collecting and analyzing information on serious violations and a regular,
timely process for translating this information into action. It calls for a streamlining
of preventive and crisis response procedures at Headquarters. It emphasizes that

success depends on leveraging the mandates, activities, and presence of the UN’s
constituent parts. It obliges the organization to be more candid in apprising member
states of the situation on the ground even when it is unpalatable to the government
or governments concerned or to other parties involved, and accordingly to stop act-

ing as its own censor on human rights due to political or other considerations. And it
requires the United Nations to discharge all its obligations under its founding doc-
uments and not just the less controversial ones. In short, it implies the sort of bold-
ness, creativity, and ethical leadership on the part of UN officials that, for some,
harks back to the spirit of Dag Hammarskjöld in the s.

The Secretary-General and the Deputy Secretary-General have demonstrated
their personal commitment to this initiative and their determination to see it
fully implemented. Rights up Front was launched through a “commitment state-
ment” by the Secretary-General sent to all UN staff in November . The state-

ment drew from the UN Charter in expressing the determination of “We the
peoples of the United Nations . . . to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights
and . . . to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations
arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.”

the future of human rights: a view from the united nations 241

The Secretary-General recalled the UN’s overall human rights responsibilities and
also insisted that these responsibilities are incumbent on him and on all staff in-
dividually; they cannot simply be left to the UN’s human rights office.
The action plan simplifies early warning and crisis response by creating a “scan-

ning mechanism” and a forum for the UN’s leadership to discuss the more com-

plex situations. Considerable emphasis is placed on ensuring accountability. The
plan is necessarily quite bureaucratic in its specific proposals for reform—in
order to bring about the transformation it seeks, rather than remain, as often hap-
pens in the United Nations, merely well-intentioned rhetoric—but it also carefully

avoids introducing new mandates or functions that might create opposition on the
part of member states.
Despite frequent citing of the mantra—coined in the “Brahimi Report” of —

that it is essential to tell member states (both individually and collectively) what they
need to know as opposed to what they want to hear, the pressures that those same

member states can bring to bear on UN staff have in practice meant the organization
has often failed to live up to that goal. Equally, when some UN staff in the field have
acted and spoken up, they have not always received the support they needed—and
should have been able to expect—from Headquarters. Rights up Front calls on UN
staff to act with moral courage and, at the same time, requires all staff to be aware

of the organization’s human rights responsibilities. It enjoins senior field staff to dem-
onstrate principled leadership, and promises that Headquarters will back them when
they do. For example, if a Resident Coordinator—the senior UN development official
in a country—seeks to highlight serious violations of human rights and is declared

persona non grata by the government as a result, this should not act to the detriment
of the individual’s future career prospects (as has regrettably happened in the past).
In this way, Rights up Front seeks to reassert the ethos of the international civil

servant to defend the values embodied in the UN Charter. As interpreted by
Hammarskjöld, this “requires the courage to admit that you, and those that you

represent, are wrong when you find them to be wrong, even in the face of a weaker
adversary, and [the] courage to defend what is your conviction even when you are
facing the threats of powerful opponents.”

Examples on the Ground

Rights up Front represents a broad cultural realignment that stresses the centrality
of human rights in all aspects of UN work and the importance of demonstrating

242 Andrew Gilmour

moral courage. Practically, it introduces various new internal mechanisms for
specific cases where serious violations or atrocity crimes may be imminent.
Such mechanisms were activated for the Central African Republic (CAR) in
November  and for South Sudan in the following month. Though serious vi-
olations of human rights (some of which may amount to atrocity crimes) have un-

deniably been committed since then in both countries, it is clear that the UN’s
response in these crises has benefitted from Rights up Front.
For example, the Secretary-General’s report to the Security Council on the sit-

uation in CAR became a far stronger call for action than it would have if not for

Rights up Front. Using language that rarely appears in such reports, the
Secretary-General clearly invoked the responsibility of member states “to prevent
what has the high potential to result in widespread atrocities,” and he called on the
Council to “authorize immediate and collective action to protect the civilian pop-
ulation from further violence and attacks.” The Rights up Front approach ensured

the primacy of human rights in the UN’s response in CAR and hastened the
deployment of the accountability measures authorized by the Security Council.
These included the setting up of a Commission of Inquiry as well as targeted
measures against individuals strongly suspected of undermining the peace or com-
mitting violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, such as

the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict and sexual violence.

In an effort to counter the fear and hatred that stoke the violence between
religio-ethnic communities, the Secretary-General himself recorded peace and rec-
onciliation messages that were broadcast by local media—including in the local

language, Sango.
In South Sudan, Rights up Front provided conceptual cover and institutional

backing for what was an unprecedented and courageous decision by the leadership
of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)—the opening of the gates of UN
bases to protect a flood of civilians desperately seeking safety. This followed the

barracks shoot-out provoked by a spectacularly selfish power struggle between
two factions of the ruling party, with killings quickly spreading to other parts
of the capital city, Juba, and then to three other states in the country.
Hundreds of people did not make it to the UN’s bases and were shot or butchered

as they fled in the days following December , . But over , people—
civilians, foreigners, even disarmed security personnel—made it to the UN
camps, where they found UN peacekeepers willing to receive and protect them,
as well as offer food, shelter, and medical assistance.

the future of human rights: a view from the united nations 243

There have been occasional instances in the past of UN peacekeepers allowing
civilians inside their premises in order to protect them, but never before has this
been undertaken on such a large scale and as a matter of policy. The consequences
of this decision in Juba are not yet fully known but are clearly far-reaching, and
not just for the thousands of people who were undoubtedly saved. Terrible though

the situation in South Sudan has been since December , it would almost cer-
tainly have been vastly worse had several thousand more people been killed in the
early days, with even more intense mass ethnic retribution being provoked in
many other areas of the country.

The actions taken by UNMISS are arguably the single most successful mea-
sure ever taken by the United Nations to directly protect the lives and human
rights of civilians, and are therefore a crucial precedent for UN peacekeeping in
other situations. Having said that, the risks are significant. Growing political,
security, and public health problems in those UN camps could, if they spiral

out of control, lead ultimately to a backlash against the decision to open the
gates in South Sudan. But even if they do, that decision saved tens of thousands
of lives and was an impressive example of the moral courage that Rights up
Front seeks to encourage.
The involvement of the Rights up Front forum for UN senior leaders at

Headquarters (known as the Senior Action Group) on South Sudan had implica-
tions for the redeployment of peacekeeping troops within and outside Sudan and
for designating human rights staff as “critical” and not, therefore, subject to relo-
cation when staffing levels were reduced for safety reasons. As in CAR, the

Secretary-General recorded peace and reconciliation messages to be broadcast
by radio, reminding all parties in South Sudan of their responsibility to protect
the population, and a senior staff member from the Secretary-General’s own
office in New York was immediately dispatched to Juba to assist in the response
at the start of the crisis.

Of course, attempts to improve the UN’s response to serious violations of
international human rights and humanitarian law have been made in the past
and have not succeeded in bringing about systemic change. Thus, skeptics may
be forgiven for thinking that there is not going to be much difference this time

either, especially given the low-key launch of Rights up Front. But the launch
was deliberately done “softly”: there was a desire to get on with implementing
the internal reforms that are required to improve the UN’s performance without
making a public fuss about the initiative, which in any case might have provoked a

244 Andrew Gilmour

push-back from quarters that do not want to see the UN improve its capacity in
this area.
There are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about Rights up Front. One key

difference between this and previous initiatives is the emphasis on changing atti-
tudes and reinserting human rights into the “lifeblood” of the organization. As

Deputy Secretary-General Eliasson said in a recent letter to all UN Resident
Coordinators, “in seeking to strengthen our prevention of large-scale human
rights violations, Rights up Front goes to the heart of our responsibilities as
United Nations staff. . . . For this initiative to succeed, it is essential that every

staff member of the United Nations understand what the commitment of the
United Nations to human rights means for the Organization and themselves.”

Only through such an evolution of the UN mindset, combined with various struc-
tural changes, can the spirit of this initiative hope to survive beyond the term in
office of those who have brought it about.

It is nevertheless a highly ambitious goal—and is recognized as such—to com-
mit an entire bureaucracy to an ideal, even if it is an ideal that is contained in the
organization’s founding documents. The plan foresees the accomplishment of this
goal primarily through training for all UN staff, tailored to function and level. In
addition, senior managers will have human rights objectives built into the apprais-

al compacts through which they are managed. Through Rights up Front, for the
first time accountability will be introduced at all stages of UN action and decision-
making in situations where there is the potential for serious human rights
violations. The actions envisaged should change the way staff relate to their

roles within the United Nations, the way the UN’s various entities and the
Secretary-General relate to member states, and—eventually, so it is hoped—the
way member states relate to serious human rights violations on the ground. An
evaluation framework is being developed that ultimately will provide the indica-
tors and measures of success.

While the ultimate goal of the initiative is to ensure that our actions prevent
atrocity crimes from occurring, even an informed, impassioned, human
rights-committed, and early-acting United Nations cannot always succeed.
Rather, the question to be asked is: “Have we done everything—and truly every-

thing—in our power to prevent or end these atrocities?” It is against this measure
that the United Nations failed in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Sri Lanka. Through
Rights up Front, the hope is that the organization may be able to answer that ques-
tion differently in the future.

the future of human rights: a view from the united nations 245

Other UN Human Rights Tools

Though Rights up Front is a deeply significant innovation in the UN’s arsenal for
advancing human rights—both in its cultural change aspect and its specific ways

of preventing and confronting atrocity crimes—it is not the only recent UN devel-
opment in the human rights sphere. For example, the Responsibility to Protect
principle, known colloquially as “RtoP” and now nearly ten years old, has achieved
wide acceptance despite persistent disagreements and sensitivities on when and

how to invoke its so-called third pillar concerning military intervention, especially
regarding Libya in . The annual General Assembly informal debate on the
Responsibility to Protect in  drew the largest number (sixty-nine) of member
states since its start in , with most comments being very positive. In addition,
states that have in the past been critical of aspects of RtoP (including Russia and

Iran) delivered statements that supported the thrust of the Secretary-General’s re-
port—that RtoP is first and foremost a responsibility to prevent the committing of
the four acts outlined in the  World Summit Outcome Document: war
crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

The Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on RtoP, Professor Jennifer Welsh

of Oxford University, has emphasized that the principle should serve as a catalyst
for debate and, at a minimum, demands a “duty of conduct” by the international
community. A false test, she notes, is that we continue to evaluate the strength of
RtoP in terms of whether it generates military action in a particular case. Indeed,

the concept clearly spells out that military action should be used only as a last re-
sort. In addition, each situation will demand a prudent assessment of whether co-
ercive means will achieve desired results and not do “more harm than good.” The
implied connection between RtoP and the use of force has also fed suspicion of it
as a formula for great power intervention—in her words, a “Trojan horse for

forceful, colonial-style interference in the affairs of sovereign states.” Hence,
Welsh emphasizes that RtoP is designed to support states in the fulfillment of
their sovereign responsibilities, and that it requires not just an effective response
to crises but also a readiness on the part of the international community to pre-

vent crises from emerging and escalating. Atrocity crimes are processes, not sin-
gular events with a single cause or set of causes, and therefore there are multiple
opportunities for actors to prevent the slide into violence.

To counter the perceptions that RtoP is just an idealistic-sounding cloak for
naked realpolitik, and to ensure the future credibility of the principle, Western

246 Andrew Gilmour

member states may come under pressure to take greater responsibility in contrib-
uting to peacekeeping and protection of civilians’ mandates, and not leave it to
South-Asian and African countries to provide the majority of UN peacekeepers.
In CAR, the Secretary-General appealed to European states to provide troops
and police to support an African Union force (MISCA) to help protect the com-

munities under threat. Reluctance to put troops on the ground to save lives is
strong, and politically understandable, but it also underscores the suspicion in
other parts of the world that Western support for the concept of RtoP is some-
times more in the realm of rhetoric than genuine principle. As regards the respon-

sibility of the Security Council, it is worth noting the recent French initiative to
have the permanent five members commit themselves to refrain from the use of
the veto when faced with atrocity crimes. RtoP is perhaps most needed as a vehicle
for creating early political consensus among member states on action to prevent
and end serious violations.

Common to both RtoP and Rights up Front are two important ideas. The first
is the notion of a collective responsibility (and not just a discretionary right) to act
in the face of serious violations of human rights. The second is the imperative to
protect, through prevention, by helping states to fulfill their international human
rights obligations. Respect for basic human rights principles of nondiscrimination

and equality—be they legal or constitutional protections—such as access to social
and economic opportunities, freedom to run for political office, and the ability to
practice one’s religious confession or sexual orientation diminishes the risk that
the atrocity crimes under RtoP are likely to occur. Ten years ago Kofi Annan em-

phasized that the goal of RtoP was not to develop new law but rather to strengthen
states’ commitment to existing legal obligations—not only civil and political rights
but equally the full range of economic, social, and cultural rights. A recent exam-
ple was raised by the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea,
which stated that crimes against humanity had been committed against starving

populations through decisions and policies that violated the right to food.
According to the commission, these policies were applied for the purpose of sus-
taining the present political system in full awareness that the decision to do so
would exacerbate the famine and starvation-related deaths.

Another debate currently underway in the United Nations centers on the ques-
tion of how closely the post- development agenda will be aligned to interna-
tional human rights standards. Representatives of nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) have expressed concern that member states’ deliberations on a set of

the future of human rights: a view from the united nations 247

sustainable development goals do not make sufficient reference to the existing
human rights obligations of states. Education seems to be an exception, but pov-
erty eradication, food, health, water and sanitation, decent work, and social pro-
tection are not currently recognized as matters of human rights in the context
of these hugely important discussions. NGOs have made calls for a development

framework that goes beyond references to “human rights” and that asserts inter-
national human rights law in such a way that it provides states and the interna-
tional community with a framework of clear obligations and responsibilities
(which was not the case with the Millennium Development Goals). Such a frame-

work would make a direct link between development and UN human rights mon-
itoring mechanisms, such as the relevant treaty bodies, special procedures, and
Universal Periodic Review that reviews the performance of states in the implemen-
tation of the core international human rights treaties.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has recommended that

nondiscrimination and equality be two stand-alone goals in the post- devel-
opment agenda. The main processes leading to  and key reports have recog-
nized the centrality of human rights in the future development agenda. In the
words of the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Post- Development
Planning, Amina Mohammed: “Upholding human rights and freeing people

from fear and want are inseparable. An enduring Post- agenda must therefore
include peace and stability, human rights and effective governance, based on the
rule of law and credible institutions, as both outcomes and enablers of true sus-
tainable development.”

At the same time, just as there is a push for greater ownership and under-
standing of human rights principles among ordinary people, so is there likely to
be a parallel emphasis on increased respect for international rules and com-
mitments by states. Eleanor Roosevelt’s response to her own question “Where,
after all, do universal human rights begin?” was “In small places, close to

home.” As the head of one NGO said recently, one necessary initiative for the
twenty-first century is to start a worldwide movement for all to learn, know,
and own human rights as a way of life. Respect for “the other” and for the diver-
sity of ideas, opinions, cultures, and religions must be an integral part of our

daily living. The imperative of a bottom-up approach to human rights gains
traction in light of surveys that indicate that in parts of the developing world
the concept of human rights is seen as an elitist and Western agenda, inaccessible
to the poor.

248 Andrew Gilmour

Some Conclusions

Even the most cursory review of the UN’s human rights work reveals that there has
been progress. During much of the cold war the superpowers prevented the

Commission on Human Rights from naming violators. For instance, when in 
Amnesty International organized a conference on torture at UNESCO headquarters,
it was expelled from the premises just before the start of the proceedings. Ian Martin,
a veteran senior UN official and human rights expert, has identified a number of the

most important UN advances of the past two decades, which include (i) the creation
of the post of the High Commissioner …