This chapter addresses a former practice where international civil servants of certain UN organisations, who were not satisfied with the decisions rendered by the administrative tribunal dealing with their employment matters, were able to have these decisions re-examined by the Court. These proceedings drew much attention to the access and procedural inclusion of individuals before the World Court. It argues that the Court was indeed the incorrect forum for wronged UN staff members seeking redress due to its own Statute barring access to individuals and therefore entailing a permanent inequality of the parties. However, it argues that while the Court was handling such disputes, there were ways to adjust its procedural mechanisms to further bridge the inequality between the parties.

This chapter examines the universal system for the protection of human rights, focusing on the permanent organs of the United Nations (UN) and specialized human rights bodies. It explores the roles and functions of these organs, including the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, International Court of Justice, and the Secretary-General, as well as various human rights treaty bodies and special procedures. The chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities in the universal human rights system, highlighting the importance of international cooperation and the role of UN mechanisms in promoting and protecting human rights worldwide.

This title explores the institutional framework for the international protection of human rights, focusing on the various organizations, bodies, and mechanisms that play a role in monitoring, promoting, and enforcing human rights standards. It covers the universal human rights system established by the United Nations, including the roles and functions of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, International Court of Justice, and specialized human rights bodies such as the Human Rights Council and treaty-based bodies. The section also examines the regional human rights systems in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and the Arab-Muslim world, highlighting the specific institutions and mechanisms established by these regions to protect human rights. By providing a comprehensive overview of the institutional architecture, this title aims to illustrate the complexity and diversity of the international human rights protection system and the importance of coordinated efforts among different actors to address human rights violations effectively.

International Law, we are often told, ‘moved to Institutions’ in the early twentieth century. While recent literature has (masterfully, to be sure) explored the intellectual trajectories of some of the leading lawyer-diplomats or legal doctrines entangled in these international organisations, most accounts divorce their analysis from the seemingly banal histories of the ‘buildings, staffs, and letterheads’. This is particularly true for the history of the interim headquarters of international institutions. For the towering edifices specially erected to host these organisations, just like Rome, were not built in one day. For this reason, the early years of these institutions were shaped by the spatial constraints that their improvised and temporal dwellings imposed on them. For that reason, in this piece I shed light on the interim function of the Hotel National (1920–1937) and the Lake Success complex (1947–1952), as, respectively, placeholders for the League of Nations and the United Nations. By situating the everyday geographies of international law-making in these two precarious and unstable venues, I explore the tensions and hierarchies embedded within parochial modes of organisation that claimed the mantle of the international.

By focusing on the relations between the polity of Ethiopia and the institutions of international ordering – the United Nations and its predecessor, the League of Nations, chief among them – in this chapter I explore the problem of the ‘global colour line’ in relation to international institutions. In particular, I trace the lofty promises, and resounding disappointments, that the United Nations (as a proverbial White, and male, Knight) offered the racialised peoples of the world – and Ethiopia, in particular – in their attempt to challenge a racialised and hierarchical global order. The result is neither a blind celebration of the United Nations’ anticolonial potential, nor a resolute condemnation of its imperial lineage. Instead, I want to embrace the ambiguities offered by the metaphor of this racialised and gendered saviour trope – especially in relation to the racialised savage non-European other. For in any attempt to overturn the global colour line, the United Nations and its family of international organisations will prove to be both utterly indispensable and insufficient.

This chapter recounts some of the most important work that has been achieved or is ongoing: at global level (in the United Nations system); at regional level (especially in the African, American, and European human rights systems); by the International Committee of the Cross; and especially by pioneering civil society organizations (local and international human rights bodies). Thus, for instance, the seminal role of Amnesty International in promoting the adoption and implementation of a global treaty on the prohibition of torture—and drawing attention to the problem of torture more broadly—cannot be overstated.

First of two chapters on non-multilateral treaty based, transnational approaches to combatting grand corruption. This one explores international support for domestic prosecutors, focusing on the example of Guatemala’s Commission Against Impunity (CICIG)(2007–2019). It describes the extent of state capture and its origins in the country’s internal armed conflict, the mandate and activities of CICIG, and its achievements, activities and limitations. It briefly considers other such commissions.

The relevant international treaty-based law on corruption, human rights and the environment, with a focus on the convergence of these areas of law. Anti-corruption treaties, especially UNCAC, and human rights treaties are both moving towards recognition of the commonalities. Traces 3 approaches to convergence: corruption as background/context, a human-rights based approach, and a human right to be free of corruption.

In December 1946 the General Assembly requested that the Economic and Social Council prepare a draft genocide convention with a view to its adoption at the 1947 session of the Assembly. The Secretariat prepared a draft convention with the assistance of three experts in international criminal law, Raphael Lemkin, Henri Donnedieu de Vabres and Vespasian Pella. However, the Economic and Social Council did not complete consultations with Member States in 1947. In early 1948, the Council established an Ad Hoc Committee composed of representatives of several Member States which prepared a revised draft. This draft was then revised and adopted by the Sixth Committee of the General Assembly in December 1948. The Assembly also adopted resolutions calling for consideration of the establishment of an international criminal court and for the extension of the Convention to colonies. The Convention entered into force in January 1951 after the threshold of twenty ratifications or accessions had been achieved.

The demise of the League of Nations did not lead to the end of colonial membership at international organisations. Chapter Six examines how the League’s legacy of colonial membership continued under the United Nations. Despite not being fully independent, the Indian National Congress would appoint India’s delegation at the first General Assembly in 1946, resulting in a very different international personality. No longer constrained and gagged by British appointees and the imperial conference, India would aggressively pursue its longstanding grievances against South Africa, destroying the ideal of inter se, and effectively ending the British ideal of colonial membership at international organisations. Instead, this chapter reveals how the end of the legacy of colonial membership went beyond the British Empire, and was replicated by the Soviet Union in the accession of Soviet Belorussia and Ukraine. Neither of these member states would become independent until 1991.

Article VIII of the Genocide Convention contemplates the role of organs of the United Nations in the implementation and enforcement of the Convention. There are many examples of States raising charges of genocide before the General Assembly and the Security Council. However, these bodies have onlyr rarely agreed to characterize acts as genocidal. In 1994, very controversially the Security Council resisted describing the unfolding genocide in Rwanda by its proper name. In 2004 the Secretary General established the position of Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Genocide, including the scope fo the Convention, has also been considered by the Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities, the Ad Hoc Group of Experts on apartheid, the Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council.

Genocide is sometimes called the ’crime of crimes’. The word was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944, then declared an international crime by the United Nations General Assembly. In 1948, the Genocide Convention was adopted. As the first human rights treaty of modern times, it constituted a significant intrusion into what had previously been a matter exclusively of domestic concern. This explains the narrow definition of the crime of genocide. It requires proof of an intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Only a half century after its adoption did the Genocide Convention take on real significance with inter-State cases being filed at the International Court of Justice and many prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Convention requires that States Parties punish genocide but they are also required to prevent it, even when it takes place outside their own territory. More than 150 States have ratified the Genocide Convention. Genocide is also prohibited under customary international law. It is generally agreed that the duty to punish genocide is a peremptory norm of international law (jus cogens).

The post-First World War minorities treaties regime was an initial attempt by international law to address the rights of national and ethnic minorities. Its shorcomings prompted Raphael Lemkin, in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, to propose a new category of international crime that he named genocide. The International Military Tribunal prosecuted acts of genocide using the category of crimes against humanity. Several of the defendants were convicted of acts aimed at destruction of Europe’s Jewish population. However, crimes against humanity were confined to acts associated with aggressive war. At the first session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1946, a resolution on genocide was proposed in order to address the peacetime atrocities that were neglected in the Nuremberg judgment. The resolution recognized genocide as an international crime and called for preparation of a convention.