Innovating at the UN Human Rights Council Session
The Human Rights Liaison Unit (HRLU) at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) supports the organisation in making the best use of human rights mechanisms. ‘Human rights mechanisms’ refer to the UN bodies that seek to hold member states accountable to their human rights obligations. The UN Human Rights Council is one such mechanism, in which countries, international organizations, and NGOs come together to review and make recommendations on human rights violations around the world. By liaising with these mechanisms, the HRLU contributes to furthering UNHCR’s mandate for the protection of people living in displacement and statelessness contexts.
A day in the life of the Human Rights Liaison Unit at UNHCR spans months and years, pasts and futures. This specific day at the Human Rights Council Session when the team represented UNHCR on issues such as human rights in Costa Rica and the rights of older persons in displacement, is linked with many months before when the team synthesised the organization’s hopes for these challenges. This day also joins with the days and months ahead when local and global actors build on their advocacy and recommendations. By engaging with the UN Human Rights Council, UNHCR brings its concerns out of the traditional humanitarian space. The mechanisms of the UN Human Rights Council drive forward with regularity and speed. To speak of a day interacting with these mechanisms is to speak of innovations across time, across organizational silos, across the hurdles and hindrances of the UN’s diplomatic, political, and humanitarian interface. This article considers such innovations, and such a day.
September 12th, 2019, 10.15 am
There are no windows in the chamber to indicate the bright Geneva morning outside, breaking over the first signs of autumn. Valerie Svobodova is waiting in anticipation for the Vice-President of the UN Human Rights Council to give UNHCR the floor. Valerie leads the HRLU and, as such, she is delivering a statement on behalf of UNHCR at the 42nd Session of the UN Human Rights Council; this time on the rights of elderly people who are forcibly displaced. More startling than the juxtapositions of representatives across the floor — Venezuela beside Vanuatu, Canada next to Cambodia — is the ceiling of Room XX in the Palais des Nations. The Palais des Nations is the home of the UN Office at Geneva, and serves as a headquarters for UN activities and intergovernmental meetings. Over ten years ago, Spanish artist Miquel Barceló transformed the domed ceiling of the meeting chamber into a sea of psychedelic stalactites. The colours dominate the attention, and then wane and change as you take new perspectives underneath. The Vice-President says, “Thank you, Democratic Republic of Congo. And I now give the floor to UNHCR.” Valerie turns on her microphone and leans forward to speak:
Madame Vice-President,
…UNHCR acknowledges that older persons are disproportionately affected in emergencies; and supports the recommendations made in the report, including to recognize and strengthen the roles and capacities of older persons in forced displacement; to take into account the needs of older persons at all stages of emergency response; and to provide access to national systems, including social protection, for refugees and internally displaced older persons.
The first ever Global Refugee Forum, to be held on 17–18 December, provides a unique opportunity to advance on many of these recommendations. Through the delivery of pledges and contributions and sharing of good practices, member states and other stakeholders will have an important platform for achieving tangible benefits for older refugees and their host communities.
… Thank you, Madame Vice-President.
The language of each statement can seem sedated and formulaic. Verbs like ‘acknowledge’, ‘encourage’, and ‘commit’ recur and restrain in a rhetoric unique to this various community. To the outsider, at least, it seems that the disorder of human rights violations is addressed through an excess of order, in the safety of patterns. How does the Human Rights Liaison Unit innovate here? How do they colour their work in processes so steeped in structure and convention? How do the colours change as they take new perspectives underneath?
Valerie’s statement hoists UNHCR’s humanitarian concerns out of the habitual humanitarian space. It connects the vision of different parts of UNHCR with the language and form of this mechanism, with our lessons from the past, with interactions with member states and organisations as this challenge orbits around the Council, with the opportunities to further these goals at the Global Refugee Forum, with the national laws and policies that will protect displaced older persons in emergency situations in the future. This carefully crafted statement draws lines between lessons and networks and temporalities; producing something that is on the surface careful and conventional, but is at its core novel, edifying, and unique.
September 12th, 2019, 12.05 pm
Just after noon, the speaker list for Costa Rica’s ‘Universal Periodic Review’ (UPR) was released, and UNHCR was not on the list. Every member state of the UN Human Rights Council undergoes a UPR every four years, and the process consists of a review of the state’s human rights situation. Other states, as well as UN Agencies and non-governmental organizations contribute, culminating in a series of recommendations that the state under review can simply note, or accept to implement as a priority. At the Session, other states and organizations can comment on the process. It’s like one big peer review. The Human Rights Liaison Unit had prepared a statement on Costa Rica, but unfortunately, did not make the cut for a speaker slot. The team was left with the challenge of influencing the process, without a slot to share its position on the floor.
Stemming from a collaboration with UNHCR’s office in Costa Rica, and relevant divisions and departments, UNHCR wished to call on Costa Rica to support recommendations to combat xenophobia, racial discrimination, and stigmatisation — as a means of furthering the social inclusion and integration of forcibly displaced people there who suffer these trends. Ivona Truscan, the HRLU Liaison Officer who has the responsibility of coordinating inputs into these Council sessions, was left with a predicament. The cogs of procedure and opportunity turned against UNHCR. She had to find a way of adding UNHCR’s voice to the chorus. Noticing the United Nations’ Population Fund, the agency with responsibility for sexual and reproductive health, on the bill, Ivona approached their team for an informal conversation, with an idea in mind.
Before long, the UN Population Fund representative, Carolina Aguirre Serazzi, was given the floor:
Thank you Mr. Vice-President,
…Costa Rica has made significant progress in the adoption of policies geared towards the elimination of discrimination and xenophobia. Also, we reaffirm our ongoing support to the process of strengthening the legal framework to combat discrimination and we will add our efforts to what UNHCR is doing, which is supporting the adoption of measures that guarantee the promotion of social inclusion and integration of persons who are forcibly displaced.
Innovation in the bureaucratic zone means acting in the spirit of your agenda, even when the processes don’t open up a favourable path before you. Strategic partnerships may be struck to circumvent a closed door, with collaboration opening new possibilities and understandings. Ivona remarked, “The reaction from the Population Fund was really positive, and was appreciated by colleagues in Geneva and Costa Rica. In fact, I think it strengthened our advocacy with a ‘one-UN’ approach. It also enabled us to be more vocal, and working jointly minimised any negative attention and it is an advantage to have others speaking on our issues.” The opportunity for this event emerged quite spontaneously, and the experience taught the Human Rights Liaison Unit that other actors are very open to collaboration when it is sought.
September 12th, 2019, 04.50 pm
In the Palais corridors, the faces of representatives and their teams took the air of a day’s energy almost spent, as they mulled over impressions of the shifts in their agendas and networks that day. Did today’s steps have velocity, or merely direction? The engine of the mechanism was relenting in notebooks fuller and the thought-space taking to time: did today conciliate the thousands of difficult yesterdays with the thousand possible tomorrows? Meanwhile, Ivona’s day was just picking up pace in a conference room where UNHCR’s side event on elderly people in forced displacement was about to begin.
When Valerie spoke before the UN Human Rights Council about the need for specific protections for older people who become displaced, she had 90 seconds to get her message across. The myriad short meetings and connections, too, edge UNHCR’s goals closer and closer to centres of attention and power. Consensus around an issue’s importance creates new questions and needs. The side event addressed the challenge of building knowledge and capacity around the issue, with implementation in mind. The Human Rights Liaison team had to find an opportunity for depth when the processes offer only brief windows of dialogue.
Combining the knowledge of multiple actors on the panel (UNHCR, HelpAge International, IFRC, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch), ideas and lessons on implementing the recommendations of the resolution on the human rights of older persons filled the room for the hour and a half. HelpAge International spoke of their survey that showed that large numbers of older people are excluded from decision-making in emergency situations. IFRC reminded us of the important role that older people can play as agentive actors in humanitarian solutions. Amnesty International shared lessons from a report on elderly people in Myanmar, who were killed at three times the rate of other age groups in the conflict. UNHCR called for more disaggregated data to increase our ability to respond in an age-sensitive manner. Such a discussion brought advocacy into the space of implementation.
Taking the initiative to organise this event, UNHCR’s Human Rights Liaison Unit provided leadership in a way that brought the displaced to the centre of the discussion of the human rights of older persons. Such an event complimented the organization’s input into the work of the Independent Expert, who made a report for the Council on the topic, as well as the liaison with UNHCR departments, the oral statements, and advocacy for the adoption of the Resolution on this issue. Innovation in the bureaucratic space, for this team at least, meant a multi-pronged approach that functioned across the entire process of change, from highlighting challenges to informing human rights actors on the implementation of their response.
The metrics of diplomatic innovation
What does a day in the life of the Human Rights Liaison team’s engagement with a UN Human Rights Council mechanism teach us about the potential for greater innovation in this space?
Creative solutions can be sought in prime conditions. When procedures constrain, strong relationships and networks with key stakeholders can bridge barriers to progress. In addition, embedding the potential of future opportunities into our analysis of the past, and in our communication and priorities in the present, can optimise impact in the rolling, procedural machinations of a council-structure.
For UNHCR, the engagement with human rights mechanisms represents a structural innovation that reflects our broadening out of the traditional humanitarian space. Just as the perspectives and approaches of the development sector have increasingly enhanced the delivery of UNHCR’s mandate in the past decades, the lens and mechanisms of human rights have the potential to fill blindspots with colourful insights and enriched assumptions. In using such a lens, we learn that more effective solutions may arise when we see refugee protection challenges in the context of broader human rights challenges. Putting UNHCR’s human rights DNA under the microscope helps us maximise protection solutions in the lives of displaced and stateless people by seeing how the solutions to their challenges relate to the human rights mission more holistically.
