Human Rights without Support of the Concerned State: A Comparative Analysis of Successive Human Rights Council Mechanisms Established for Burundi and Myanmar

Abstract

The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) is the central United Nations institution charged with protecting and promoting human rights globally. In response to human rights violations in specific countries, the HRC may exercise its authority to establish fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry to help bring wrongdoers to justice. As an inter-governmental body, the HRC favors cooperative arrangements with states in which human rights violations have occurred. Nevertheless, the HRC has acted over the objections of governments to establish human rights mechanisms. This report examines four occasions on which the HRC has done so: when it established successive fact-finding and investigative bodies for Burundi and for Myanmar, respectively. To gain insight into the conditions under which the HRC will proceed to establish fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry without the cooperation of the country in question, the report identifies the public explanations HRC member states offered of their votes on the resolutions creating or extended these international mandates. To gain insight into the consequences of creating human rights interventions under these circumstances, the report also reviews the substantive findings and operational challenges of each mechanism.