Promises and Challenges for Human Rights: The Paradox of the United Nations

• In Event: Theories of Human Rights

Abstract

This paper considers the complex and contradictory role of the UN and human rights. While dominant realist perspectives since the 1970s place emphasis on theorizing the role of the UN as an international organization of competing state interests, here we ask: What can we learn when we pivot to consider the UN differently, as inherently paradoxical, regarding human rights? Since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN has been a key site in the development and advancement of human rights, with written statements in various forms – such as declarations, conventions, and compacts – potentiating a moment of universally applied and accessed rights shared by all humanity regardless of numerous lived inequalities in status. Yet this promise of universality is not straightforward. We define the paradox of the UN in relation to inherent contradictory tensions embedded in UN promises for universal human rights – where universal claims are both advanced and limited at the same time. This paradox is considered in three ways. These are: (i) the UN as knowledge producer, considering the contradictory impacts of global policies and ideas specifically for marginalized groups; (ii) the UN in relation to non-state actors included in human rights policies generically, but denied rights in sovereign states; and (iii) the UN system as a grouping of sovereign states, where there is uneven buy-in to often non-binding agreements, as well as an absence of effective global governance regarding urgent global issues. Methodologically, the study combines detailed document analysis of UN declarations, and original interviews with UN officers. Specifically, there is a focus on UN declarations and offices associated with the rights of women, racialized populations, and Indigenous peoples.

Authors

• Abigail B. Bakan, University of Toronto

• Yasmeen M Abu-Laban, University of Alberta