F1HH 5010 - Operationalizing HR in the UN Peace and Security Agenda.

Full title: OPERATIONALIZING HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE UN PEACE AND SECURITY AGENDA: BUILDING STRATEGIES FOR PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN CONFLICTS

This course offers a practitioner's approach to developing strategies for the operationalization of human rights on responding to serious violations during crises and conflict. Human rights are traditionally looked at mostly as a legal topic. However, the reality of the geopolitical order means that whereas standards and norms have for the most part been set through the elaborations of treaties and conventions, their implementation in the absence of an international enforcer of international human rights law requires building political and operational strategies to prevent, mitigate and protect human rights in prior, during and post conflict. This course will provide an exploration of how United Nations practitioners build political and operational strategies to advance the human rights agenda in the broader peace and security agenda.
While human rights violations represent both the root causes and symptoms of conflicts, they are often only thought about as an “add-on” when designing conflict resolution or response strategies at the UN. The course will start by exploring the importance of integrating human rights in political strategies and response to conflict. It will provide a broad horizon scanning of the place of human rights in the political debates and the peace and security agenda. It will explore the political actors and stakeholder of international response to conflict and review the political and operational tools available to practitioners in building strategies to respond to human rights in conflict. The course will then review lessons learned from selected case studies of strategies for human rights in conflict settings, their success, limitations and challenges.
It aims at providing student with a political understanding of human rights, an understanding of human rights in practice, and to expose them to the concrete work of human rights officers at the United Nations in the conflict responses through working on concrete cases and benefiting from a interactive dialogue with current practitioners.

The course will be a mix of lectures, practitioners lessons learned, and active case studies exercise. Students will be ask to role play political roles as member states and human rights practitioners in mock UN exercises.

Chloé MARNAY-BASZANGER

Séminaire

English

Students are expected to read all required material and to actively follow the news on current conflict as well as the UN proceedings related to this conflict.

Students following this class should have a foundation in International Human Rights Law and international instruments and basic knowledge and understanding of the international Peace and security architecture. Students should have a keen interest in the nexus between conflict and human rights, politics and human rights and interest in developing creative political and operational strategies to address human rights crisis in conflict.

Spring 2024-2025

- Class attendance and participation (10%): This includes discussions of latest news and developments in the peace and security agenda, current conflicts and Security Council resolutions.
- One oral presentation (30%): each student will have to complete an in class-presentation of tools, mechanisms, or instruments for human rights strategies or a case study of integration of human rights in selected conflict responses.
- The second part of the assessment, student will pick a current conflict and work in groups (of 2/3) to develop a strategy to integrate human rights in the UN political and operational strategies to respond to the situation. They will be requested to draft a strategic note for the High Commissioner for human rights on their chose conflict which will be presented to the UN Secretary-General and other UN peace and security departments in a mock UN Executive Committee and to convince member states of their approach. Students will be assessed on their written paper and their performance in the mock UN executive committee and member state advocacy strategy.

Lecture, seminar including presentations by outside experts, class interaction, mock UN.