The Politics of Shame: The Condemnation of Country Human Rights Practices in the UNCHR

Abstract

Although the United Nations Commission on Human Rights served as the primary forum in which governments publicly named and shamed others for abusing their citizens, the practices of the commission have been largely ignored by political scientists. To address that deficiency, this study analyzes the actions of the commission and its members' voting records in the 1977–2001 period. It establishes that targeting and punishment by the commission decreasingly fit the predictions of a realist perspective, in which naming and shaming is an inherently political exercise, and increasingly fit the predictions of a liberal “reputation” perspective, in which governments hold others to their promises, and a constructivist “social conformity” perspective, in which governments distribute and respond to social rewards and punishments. With the end of the Cold War, the commission's targeting and punishment of countries was based less on partisan ties, power politics, and the privileges of membership, and more on those countries' actual human rights violations, treaty commitments, and active participation in cooperative endeavors such as peacekeeping operations.

Do governments mean business when they derogate? Human rights violations during notified states of emergency

“…In practice, critics argue it is often akin to a dog that only barks little and bites even less. The same is said of the UN Human Rights Council (formerly UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR)), even if there is some evidence that it has become less partisan and politically motivated over time (Lebovic and Voeten 2006).…”

“…Average marginal effects reported in table 4 indicate that autocracies which derogate from their ICCPR obligations are more likely to be targeted by the UN Commission on Human Rights over the period 1981 to 2000 (model 1) and also targeted by a stronger measure (model 2) ranging from discussion, to a confidential measure, advisory measure to a public resolution, using data taken from Lebovic and Voeten (2006). Note that this is despite controlling for the level of respect for human rights in these countries.…”

The Politics of Leverage in International Relations

“…15. As discussed in the following chapters, recent scholarship on naming and shaming building on these arguments has focused more on the extent to which public criticism is correlated with changes in human rights behavior, often with conflicting results (e.g., Hafner-Burton 2008; Krain 2012; Lebovic and Voeten 2006;Murdie and Davis 2012;Ron, Ramos, and Rodgers 2005). 16.…”

Human Rights as Reputation Builder: Compliance with the Convention Against Torture

“…For example, Simmons (2000) analyzed states that were new entrants on the international scene, emerging from either a period of nondemocracy or global isolation and found that states were concerned with their reputations for respecting the rule of law because this affected the level of economic integration they were able to achieve. In addition, the power of shame which comes from a bad reputation has been found to be a strong deterrent for states, preventing them from engaging in norm-violating behavior (Donnelly 1998;Franklin 2008;Lebovic and Voeten 2006).…”