The Politics Of The UN Commission On Human Rights/ Human Rights Council

This chapter focuses on the UN Commission on Human Rights - which has now been transformed into the Human Rights Council, which is an intergovernmental body. It is a body composed of governments. It, in turn, has created a system of special procedures composed of individual so-called experts. A special rapporteur on torture is one of the special procedures of the Commission on Human Rights, now the Council, so you have the rather odd business of this governmental body looking to independent expertise in order to do certain kinds of work. The UN Charter has certain clauses about human rights requiring states to cooperate with the United Nations to promote and ensure respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and many would argue that the Declaration is simply a catalogue of those human rights whose respect is already mandated by the Charter. Keywords: fundamental freedom; Human Rights Council; intergovernmental body; politics; torture; UN Charter; UN Commission on Human Rights