The United Nations Human Rights Council as the Successor to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights: An Analysis of the UN Human Rights Councils Work, Functions and Accountability

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2017 in the subject Law - European and International Law, Intellectual Properties, grade: High distinction (Note 1), University of New South Wales, Sydney (Faculty of Law), course: Human Rights, language: English, abstract: This paper focuses on the work, main functions and accountability of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The author examines historically the failures of the UN Human Rights Council's predecessor, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights by showing the Commission's problematic composition of membership and its reaction to serious human rights violations. The paper illustrates one of the Council's most important functions: The Universal Periodic Review mechanism (UPR). Ultimately, the author comes to the conclusion that the General Assembly of the United Nations made the right decision to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights with the UN Human Rights Council. This paper is a revised version of the original paper that was delivered to the University of New South Wales Sydney in September 2017. The course lecturer in Human Rights required that the original submission to the Faculty of Law should not exceed 800 words. The original article was graded with "High Distinction" (an outstanding performance). The lecturer commented: "This is a very good discussion of the set topic [and] of the failures of the Commission and its replacement by the Council." Besides the legal history, this paper also analyses the Council's work, functions and accountability.