Human Rights Institutions under the U.N. System

Lung-chu Chen

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights is holding its annual meeting in Geneva.  It is the major U.N. body charged with the task of promoting and protecting human rights, but not the only one.

The U.N. Charter projects the promotion and protection of human rights as a principal purpose, together with the maintenance of international peace and security.  Both goals are closely linked.

Every decision has a human rights dimension.  In this broad sense, the six principal organs of the United Nations—General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council, International Court of Justice, and the Secretariat—are all relevant to human rights.  In the restrictive sense, the U.N. Charter entrusts the task of promoting and protecting human rights to Economic and Social Council.  Thus, Economic and Social Council has created Commission on Human Rights and Commission on the Status of Women.  Under the Commission on Human Rights is a Subcommission on Protection of Minorities and Prevention of Discrimination.  Unlike the Commission, the Subcommission consists of 26 persons who serve in their individual capacity as experts rather than governmental representatives.  Another important office is the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights which oversees the U.N. Human Rights Center in Geneva and has become a focal point of U.N. human rights activities.  The preceding institutions are based on the U.N. Charter.

In addition, under the U.N. system, concern for human rights has greatly expanded through the conclusion and operation of various human rights treaties.  There are six major human rights treaties which are considered “the core human rights treaties.”  Those six treaties deal respectively with: (1) civil and political rights, (2) economic, social and cultural rights, (3) outlawing torture and other cruel treatment, (4) elimination of racial discrimination, (5) elimination of discrimination against women, and (6) rights of children.  A committee is established under each of these treaties, to monitor and implement the treaty concerned.  These are known as treaty-based human rights institutions.

All in all, the Charter-based institutions, together with the treaty-based institutions, extend to a wide area of human rights concerns.

(The writer is Chairman of the Lung-chu Chen New Century Foundation and a Professor at New York Law School.)