United Nations Commission on Human Rights
It was a subsidiary body of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and was also assisted in its work by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR).
It met for the first time in January 1947 and established a drafting committee for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948.
None of these measures, however, were able to make the Commission as effective as desired, mainly because of the presence of human rights violators and the politicization of the body.
The Commission held its final meeting in Geneva on March 27, 2006, and was replaced by the United Nations Human Rights Council in the same year.
[9] Individuals with expertise in particular areas of human rights were appointed by the chair of the Commission to serve as Special Rapporteurs for a maximum of six years.
They are unpaid, independent experts who receive personnel and logistical support from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for their work.
Their main activities are to examine, monitor, advise and publicly report on human rights situations in specific countries or territories.
[12] Special procedures also include working groups made up of up to five experts who monitor and investigate specific human rights concerns.
In particular, several of its member countries themselves had dubious human rights records, including states whose representatives had been elected to chair the Commission.
[13] Countries with records of human rights abuses like torture, extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment, and disappearances likely sought election to the Commission to project a positive international image.
The desire of states with problematic human rights records to be elected to the Commission was viewed largely as a way to defend themselves from such attacks.
For example, on July 30, 2004, it was the United Nations Security Council, not the Commission, that passed a resolution—by 13–0, with China and Pakistan abstaining, threatening Sudan with unspecified sanctions if the situation in the Darfur region did not improve within the following 30 days.
[20] In 2002, Anne Bayefsky, a professor of international law at York University in Toronto, wrote that "commission members seek to avoid directly criticizing states with human rights problems, frequently by focusing on Israel, a state that, according to analysis of summary records, has for over 30 years occupied 15 percent of commission time and has been the subject of a third of country-specific resolutions".
[25] In 1977, the Commission formed a "Sub-Commission to study, with a view to formulating guidelines, if possible, the question of the protection of those detained on the grounds of mental ill-health against treatment that might adversely affect the human personality and its physical and intellectual integrity."
[28] In 1978 the UNCHR endorsed the recommendation of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities to distribute widely the Ruhashyankiko Report.
René Degni-Segui was appointed as a Special Rapporteur, immediately visited Rwanda and promptly issued a report on the scope of the genocide.
