Research Seminar: Just words: Human rights language in UN Security Council resolutions
In this CRIC research seminar, PhD. fellow Troels Gauslå Engell will facilitate discussion on the use of human rights language in the UN Security Council. The seminar is organized by CRIC and Centre for Military Studies (CMS) and will take place on November 27th from 13:30 to 15:00. A research paper will be circulated prior to the event, and interested parties are invited to participate in an academic discussion of Troels Gauslå Engell’s research.
Time and place
November 27th 2017 from 13:30 to 15:00 in room 25.0.01 (CRIC's meeting room), Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Cph K.
To sign up
Please send an email to cric@cric.ku.dk no later than Wednesday November 22nd and you will receive the academic paper that will be discussed during the seminar.
Abstract
The paper argues that as human rights language has proliferated in UN Security Council documents, the Council has primarily used it as a means to achieve other ends. The use of human rights language contributes to expanding the scope of Council action to situations it would not otherwise have justifications to engage. At the same time, it contributes to the Council’s policy formulation on a broad range of issues related to how it maintains international peace and security. The background for investigating the changing role of human rights at the Security Council is a major development that has taken place in recent years, in which human rights language has become common in the Security Council, even in spite of a historical ‘linguistic phobia’ and regular proclamations that human rights have no place in the UN’s peace and security agenda. Especially since 2013 it has become the norm rather than the exception that human rights language is inserted in resolutions and this in a widening range of contexts. The paper follows this development through quantitative and qualitative textual analysis of the resolutions adopted since 1998, supplemented with interviews with UN staff and diplomats in and around the Council.
About research seminars at CRIC
The research seminar is a forum for academic debate, organized around the paper, and is conducted on the assumption that the paper has been read by participants