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Arbour, Louise --- "Foreword by Louise Arbour" [2020] ELECD 409; in Tistounet, Eric (ed), "The UN Human Rights Council" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020) vii

Book Title: The UN Human Rights Council

Editor(s): Tistounet, Eric

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section Title: Foreword by Louise Arbour

Author(s): Arbour, Louise

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Foreword
Louise Arbour
High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2004­2008




Successful institutional reforms are few and far between. The crea-
tion of the Human Rights Council in 2006 is one of them. Its suc-
cess rests in part in that it happened at all: in contrast, repeated
efforts to reform the Security Council have been unsuccessful. True,
neither the stakes nor the obstacles were as high in the case of the
call for reform of the preceding Commission on Human Rights as
they were with regard to the Security Council. However, the political
environment was similar as human rights touch on sensitive issues,
and divisions run deep.

In fact, the successful reform of the UN human rights institution might
be in part attributable to the failure of the concurrent attempts to
reform the Security Council: this became the face-saving consolation
prize. Indeed the impetus for reform came late, the timetable was
short, and consensus, although hard won, came relatively rapidly.

Be that as it may, and in contrast to reforms that are purely cosmetic,
the Human Rights Council responded head on to the main complaint
raised against its predecessor: selectivity and double standards. In an
environment where claims were increasingly made that the Human
Rights Commission was instrumentalized to target some countries and
turn a blind eye to the delinquencies of others, it was not obvious from
the outset what re-structuring of the institution could address these
claims. If they had any validity, was it not more as ...