13 - Indirect power: a critical look at civil society in the new Human Rights Council

Summary

The United Nations (UN) reform movement, as encapsulated in the High-Level Panel's A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's In Larger Freedom, and the World Summit Outcome, employs a human rights-based approach in its examination of collective security.

The High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change (HLP) was charged with examining the major threats and challenges the world faces in the broad field of peace and security, including economic and social issues insofar as they relate to peace and security, and making recommendations for a collective response. The HLP defined the threats to collective security as threats to human security, thereby switching the object of collective security from member states to human individuals. The HLP also recommended a structural change through the creation of a new human rights body, a free-standing Human Rights Council that would restore the effectiveness and credibility of the UN's devotion to human rights protection as outlined in the Preamble to the UN Charter. In his report, Kofi Annan presented human rights protection as the means by which to achieve the ends of assured collective security. Thus, following the advice of the HLP and Annan, the General Assembly voted to dissolve the Human Rights Commission and set up the new Council.

While the prescribed mission of the Council remains the same as its predecessor, it underwent various structural changes designed to make it more effective.