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Aaron Rhodes on human rights defenders in Iran at the 28th session of the UN Human Rights  Council. (Opens in a new window)

On 26 June, the United National Human Rights Council adopted a resolution concerning Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with respect to human rights. Unfortunately, some of the states with the world's worst child labor records are promoting promulgation of the treaty that, while unlikely to have any impact on victims, will obscure their own corruption in a fog of anti-free enterprise rhetoric.

The United Nations Human Rights Council is tasked with the universal protection and promotion of human rights, and is the UN’s principal human rights body. Yet it is being used by known rights abusers to produce “soft law” that allows them to erode fundamental rights. One of the Council’s biggest failures has been its appalling record on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

The pre-eminence of state over individual is rising again. It seems that references to freedom are increasingly rare in the international human rights system, receding in proportion to the rise of a new rhetoric of human rights.

The UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief recently explained that religious intolerance and hatred needed to be tackled by "trust-building" and not by prohibiting critical or even hostile speech. The Freedom Rights Project Aaron Rhodes blogs on the issue from the 25th session of the UN Human Rights Council.

Under the rhetoric of the Right to Development and indivisibility of human rights, external debt is being subsumed into human rights discourse, as championed by debtor states. The Freedom Rights Project's Aaron Rhodes reports on the discussion on foreign debt and human rights obligations at the 25th Session of the UN Human Rights Council.

The report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders has not been received well by states such as China, Russia and Venezuela, with allegations that human rights activists can "split societies apart and sabotage the social order". The Freedom RIghts Projects' Aaron Rhodes blogs from Geneva, at the UN Human Rights Council's 25th regular session.

The Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy 2014 saw the convening of top human rights activists, including victims and oppressed dissidents, to "to shine a spotlight on urgent human rights situations that require global attention."

An informal group of states that forthrightly reject criticisms of their denial of basic freedoms, while claiming to respect human rights is becoming more aggressive, strategic and mutually supportive. With the near certain election of Cuba, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia to the UN Human Rights Council during the 68th General Assembly, the trend will intensify.

When China's human rights record was examined by the UN Human Rights Council as part of the Universal Periodic Review on 22 October 2013, 141 countries made statements. Of those, only 25 voiced concerns. The rest applauded China's approach to human rights, which blatantly rejects the concept of individual civil and political liberties.