Major Achievements of the World Summit in the Area of Human Rights

Major Achievements of the World Summit in the Area of Human Rights

The most significant gains in the Outcome Document of the 2005 World Summit came in the area of human rights. There are more than 50 references to human rights in some 40 paragraphs throughout the document, a central theme of which is a reaffirmation that human rights are one of the three pillars of the United Nations, and that they are essential to the other two (peace and security, and economic and social development). Many of the human rights provisions are concrete (such as the doubling of the human rights budget). Some are historic (including agreement on the responsibility to protect, and the mandating of a new Human Rights Council).

1. A Breakthrough on the Responsibility to Protect

· This was the first recording of a broad inter-governmental (global) consensus on "the responsibility to protect," in effect raising human rights above state sovereignty, acknowledging that sovereignty in the 21st century entails the responsibility to protect people from fear and want, and declaring the primacy of the rule of law.

· It was agreed at the highest level -- heads of State and Government.

· It explicitly recognized that every State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

· It includes an agreement that, where national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from these threats, the international community, acting through the United Nations, is responsible and empowered to act to ensure human rights protection.

· It details that responsibility as one that includes prevention, action against incitement, the establishment of early warning capabilities, and whatever measures are "appropriate and necessary" to give effect to this responsibility.

· It enumerates means by which the international community, through the United Nations, must act where individual States fail, including through diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, as well as through collective action under Chapter VII of the Charter.

2. A Mandate for a New Human Rights Council

· In another historic move, the Summit mandated the establishment of a new Human Rights Council.

· The Council is to have an all-encompassing responsibility for "promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction of any kind."

· The Council will be empowered to address situations of violations of human rights, including gross and systematic violations and to promote the mainstreaming of human rights throughout the UN system.

· Work has already begun on detailing the modalities and composition of the new Council, and hopes are high for a stronger, more credible, more effective, and more highly placed intergovernmental human rights infrastructure.

3. A Strengthened Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

· The Summit embraced measures to ensure that the actual implementation of human rights advances on the ground is pursued by the United Nations with the seriousness intended by the Charter.

· The Outcome Document has called for the (unprecedented) doubling of the budget of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

· The Summit explicitly acknowledged the ambitious Plan of Action of the High Commissioner, a key plank of the reform agenda annexed to "In Larger Freedom."

· For the first time, member States unequivocally supported a closer relationship between the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Security Council, heeding one of the painful lessons of Rwanda, in which the mechanisms of the UN human rights programme warned of the coming storm, but could not be heard in the Council.

4. Advancing the Place of Human Rights in the UN System

· The Outcome Document provides the first clear, broad, and high-level intergovernmental mandate for mainstreaming human rights throughout the United Nations system.

· It also commits the UN to improving the effectiveness of the human rights treaty bodies.

· The Summit called for more support to human rights education, and endorsed the World Programme for Human Rights Education.

5. Defending the Rights of Vulnerable, Persecuted, Deprived and Exploited Groups

· The document commits the international community to step up efforts to combat poverty, and contains the first global reaffirmation of the right to development since 1993.

· It calls on States to ensure that any measures taken to combat terrorism comply with their obligations under international human rights law.

· It promises a concerted international response to the scourge of human trafficking

· It calls for renewed efforts to eliminate gender based violence and pervasive gender discrimination in education, the ownership and inheritance of property, housing, access to reproductive health, labour rights, access to land, and access to government.

· And it calls for renewed action to protect the human rights of migrants, children, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, minorities, internally displaced persons and refugees.