Setting a New Agenda for U.N. Human Rights Activities

Review of The United Nations and Human Rights: A Critical Appraisal (Philip Alston ed.

International Human Rights: Problems of Law, Policy, and Practice

The introductory chapter of this book discusses how a unifying concern for human dignity led to the establishment of human rights as part of the body of international law. Next, the chapter includes excerpts from multiple writers’ works to employ slavery as a case study to demonstrate how the international community has used the notion of human rights to create binding law. Third, this chapter discusses the philosophical drivers of human rights by including writings from other scholars and the history of the presence of human rights in international law. The chapter concludes that increasing concern for human rights may indicate that protection of human rights is presently in danger rather than improving

UN Peace operations and conflicting legitimacies

Analyses of UN peacekeeping increasingly consider legitimacy a key factor for success, conceiving of it as a resource that operations should seek and use in the pursuit of their goals. However, these analyses rarely break down legitimacy by source. Because the UN is an organization with multiple identities and duties however, different legitimacy sources—in particular output and procedural legitimacy—and the UN’s corresponding legitimation practices come into conflict in the context of peacekeeping. Drawing on a range of examples and a specific case of the UN mission in Congo, this article argues that looking at different legitimacy sources and linking them to the institutional identity of the UN is thus critical and it shows how the UN’s in contradictory legitimation practices can reduce overall legitimacy perceptions