Universal Human Rights System
The UN’s Ongoing Struggle to Address Restrictions on Basic Freedoms in the “West”
Syrian Conflict Highlights Futility of Arab League and UN Human Rights Enforcement
EU Blocks Sales of Lethal Injection Drugs to the U.S.
UN Organs Flout Panel’s Recommendations on Sri Lanka
The European Union Evades its Obligations to Refugees Fleeing Libya

Over a million people have fled Libya since the February 2011 uprising to oust leader Colonel Muammar Qadhafi turned violent. Many of them are foreigners who had taken refuge in Libya from conflict in their own countries, some…
International Justice and National Stability in Lebanon

In 2005, the government of Lebanon requested that the United Nations establish an international tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the February 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others that same year. In…
Libyan Crisis Presents Opportunity for Reforming the UN Human Rights Council

In 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Commission, an inter-governmental human rights body under the General Assembly, was replaced with the Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The predecessor Commission had struggled with legitimacy in light of its member states’…
Testing the Efficacy of the Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances in Cote d’Ivoire

Established on February 29, 1980, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) was the first UN mechanism designed to respond to a particular human rights issue. WGEID was not intended to be a permanent…





The UN Human Rights Council (HRC), mandated with addressing “gross and systematic” violations of human rights, concluded its eighteenth session in September, once again failing to address the allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the…






