The very concept of human rights implies governmental accountability. To ensure that governments are indeed held accountable for their treatment of citizens and others the United Nations has established a wide range of mechanisms to monitor compliance, and to seek to prevent as well as respond to violations.

The panoply of implementation measures that the UN has taken since 1945 has resulted in a diverse and complex set of institutional arrangements, the effectiveness of which varies widely. Indeed, there is much doubt as to the effectiveness of much of the UN's human rights efforts but also about what direction it should take. Inevitable instances of politicization and the hostile, or at best ambivalent, attitude of most governments, has at times endangered the fragile progress made on the more technical fronts. At the same time, technical efforts cannot dispense with the complex politics of actualizing the promise of human rights at and through the UN. In addition to significant actual and potential problems of duplication, overlapping and inconsistent approaches, there are major problems of under-funding and insufficient expertise. The complexity of these arrangements and the difficulty in evaluating their impact makes a comprehensive guide of the type provided here all the more indispensable.

These essays critically examine the functions, procedures, and performance of each of the major UN organs dealing with human rights, including the Security Council and the International Court of Justice as well as the more specialized bodies monitoring the implementation of human rights treaties. Significant attention is devoted to the considerable efforts at reforming the UN's human rights machinery, as illustrated most notably by the creation of the Human Rights Council to replace the Commission on Human Rights. The book also looks at the relationship between the various bodies and the potential for major reforms and restructuring.

Edited by Frédéric Mégret and Philip Alston

Frédéric Mégret is a Full-Professor and Dawson Fellow at the Faculty of Law of McGill University. He holds a Phd in international law from the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne and the Graduate Institute of International Studies of the University of Geneva. He is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris and the author of many articles on international human rights law, public international law, international criminal law and the laws of war.

Philip Alston is an international lawyer whose teaching focuses primarily on human rights law and the law of international organizations. He directs the recently-established NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, part of the Institute for International Law and Justice. He is currently John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, NYU School of Law.

Contributors:

Zehra Arat, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut

Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Geneva

Andrew Byrnes, Professor, University of New South Wales

Vincent Chetail, Director of the Global Migration Centre and Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

Andrew Clapham, Professor of Public International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

Suzanne Egan, Associate Professor, Sutherland School of Law and Director of the Centre for Human Rights, University College Dublin

Christine Evans, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Rosa Freedman, Professor of Law Conflict and Global Development, University of Reading

Olivier de Frouville, Professor of Public Law, University of Panthéon-Assas (Paris II) and Director, Paris Center for Human Rights (C.R.D.H.)

Andrzej Gadkowski, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Geneva and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan

Ludovic Hennebel, Professor, Faculty of Law, Aix en Provence University

Madeleine Heyward, Health Adviser, Permanent Mission of Australia to the United Nations Office and other International Organizations in Geneva

Janet Lord, Senior Researcher, Harvard Law School Project on Disability, USA

Georges Minet, independent researcher, formerly of the United Nations

Bruno Simma, Professor, University of Michigan Law School

Michael Ashley Stein, Executive Director, Harvard Law School Project on Disability, Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School, and Extraordinary Professor, University of Pretoria Faculty of Law Centre for Human Rights

Patrick Thornberry, Emeritus Professor of International Law, Politics, Philosophy, International Relations & Environment Department, University of Keele