Selectivity, Double Standards and Politicization

In one line

International human rights scrutiny has followed power and alliance as well as gravity, the instruments themselves demand non-selectivity, and uneven application damages the standard's authority without altering its content.

What the charge is

Three distinct complaints, and they are usually run together.

Selectivity: some situations are examined and comparable ones are not.

Double standards: the same conduct is judged differently depending on the actor.

Politicization: the mechanisms are used to pursue objectives unrelated to the rights they invoke.

They need different answers. Selectivity is a fact about attention; double standards a fact about assessment; politicization a claim about motive, which is the hardest to establish and the easiest to allege.

The instruments concede it

This is the move that makes the answer strong: the demand for non-selectivity is inside the framework, not outside it.

Vienna paragraph 5, second sentence: the international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis.

Bangkok paragraph 7: stress the universality, objectivity and non-selectivity of all human rights and the need to avoid the application of double standards in the implementation of human rights and its politicization, and that no violation of human rights can be justified.

Bangkok makes both points in one paragraph, the complaint and its limit, which is why [The Bangkok Declaration] treated it as the paragraph that answers the States which cite the document.

And the Human Rights Council was created in 2006 partly to answer the charge made against its predecessor, with the Universal Periodic Review as the structural response.

The evidence

Attention has not tracked gravity. The distribution of country resolutions, special sessions and commissions of inquiry has correlated with the political position of the State concerned as well as with the conduct.

Alliance has mattered. Conduct by a State with powerful protectors has attracted less formal attention than comparable conduct elsewhere.

Membership has been used defensively. States under scrutiny have sought seats on the bodies that scrutinise, which was among the criticisms that led to the Commission's replacement in 2006.

The Security Council's composition determines what reaches enforcement, and the veto is the mechanism.

And the standard has been invoked instrumentally. Human rights language has accompanied actions taken for other reasons, which is the politicization complaint in its strongest form and the one that does most damage to the framework's credibility.

The Universal Periodic Review as the institutional answer

Its design addresses the charge directly.

Every State is reviewed, on a cycle, regardless of what it has ratified and regardless of its power.

The basis of review includes the Charter, the Universal Declaration, the instruments the State has ratified, voluntary pledges and applicable humanitarian law, so it is not confined to treaty parties.