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Human Rights Council-
Message from the EB:- Greetings to all the delegates!! It is a privilege and honour for us to be a part of the Executive Board for UNHRC in IISUMUN 2020. UNHRC is one of the essential and paramount international forum and an integral part of the United Nations, discussing issues pertaining the spectrum of agendas concerning not only the past and the present, but also the future. The agenda for UNHRC in IISUMUN 2020 is 'Protection and prevention of violation of human rights in the situation of war with emphasis on tackling human trafficking, child prostitution and treatment of victims.' We hope that you all realise that this is an agenda with many layers and a lot of substantial points, which the executive board expects you to discuss during the span of the conference. For those who are not very well versed with the rules of procedure, I'd suggest you all to go through them before the committee session begins. You can refer to the ppt showed during the orientation session. It is available on your metacampus accounts. Finally, every delegate should submit a position paper by 3rd of March if she wants to be eligible for awards. You can reach out to us if you have any doubts regarding the committee or the MUN Conference in general. We look forward to an amazing debate and lots of fun during committee session. Happy Researching! -Regards Executive Board, UNHRC Pranjal Sharma 8561907670 Shubhra Rajendra Harsh 9587458999 Lawanya Sharma 7014466935
INTRODUCTION
As a subsidiary of the UN General Assembly, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations. All member states are responsible to cooperate on the promotion and protection of Human Rights (HR). The UNHRC and its Member States utilize the Charter of the UN, the Universal Declaration of HR (UDHR) and other HR instruments, with a primary focus on humanitarian law. It was created by the General Assembly by Resolution 60/251 in 2006, in order to replace the UN Commission on human rights. The aim of the Council is to promote universal, inalienable and indivisible Human Rights; and to work on inherent cooperation, to be a transparent intergovernmental process and to be credible. The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) represents and protects the Human Rights of all persons in the world. The Council was founded in 2006 and have 47 seats, where the members are elected every three year. The Council is mandated to promote and protect the enjoyment and full realization, by all people, of all rights established in the Charter of the United Nations and in international laws and treaties. UNHRC is guided in its work by the UN Resolutions, Declarations and Treaties. The mandate includes: preventing human rights violations, securing respect for all human rights, promoting international cooperation to protect human rights, coordinating related activities throughout the United Nations, and strengthening and streamlining the United Nations system in the field of human rights. UNHRC works closely with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and acts as the principal Human Rights Official in the United Nations. The Council promotes the right to development, coordinate United Nations human rights education and public information activities. Its main priority is to strengthen Human Rights across the United Nations system and in the world. UNHRC works with determination to ensure the enforcement of universally recognized Human Rights norms, including through promoting both the universal ratification and implementation of the major human rights treaties and respect for the rule of law.
Freedom of media and media bias
In today’s world, media is everywhere, and exposure to the media is unavoidable. From your TVs, cellphones, computers, subways, city streets, you name it- media is there. Because of this large intake of media on a daily basis, we are presented with a mass amount of information. This can have amazing benefits, such as informing us of current events, or raising awareness for a certain subject. Unfortunately, there are many risks associated with this mass intake of media. News companies aren’t obligated to tell the truth, and often add a bias to the news. Fake news websites have also began spiking in popularity, which has caused some potentially devastating effects, since anybody can write anything they want on the internet. Studies show that 28.6% of people’s main source of information regarding the 2016 US election was either social media or websites, which shows how influential they can be. Fake news is also suspected to have swayed the vote between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Another study found that pro-Trump fake news articles received 30 million Facebook shares. By not being able to trust the media around us, people are lead to believe false information is true, which can have incredibly large consequences.
Human Trafficking
Over the past century, a new and modern form of slavery, which is characterized as human trafficking, has been created. Human trafficking is one of the most widespread and fast-growing crimes in modern day society, which violates fundamental human rights. Moreover, human trafficking can be generally defined as the transportation, transferring and “trade” of persons in the extent of causing threat to them with the aim of exploitation. However, it is important to realize that the purposes and aims of human trafficking vary. Specifically, the main purposes of human trafficking include sexual exploitation, forced labour, enslavement and removal of organs. Unfortunately, human trafficking is a crime that concerns the global society. There are millions of people worldwide affected by human trafficking. Currently, almost 20 millions are victims, with 5.5 of them being children according to a 2012 report1. In fact, all countries are affected by human trafficking due to the fact that they serve as, either solely or combined countries of origin, transit or destination. What one can understand from this, is that both developing countries and developed countries are affected by human trafficking since traffickers are able to find, as characterized by them, “vulnerable” people,
meaning people who are suffering from poverty, war crimes, previous physical and sexual abuses etc. Keeping the above in mind, one reason that makes human trafficking such a widespread crime is the fact that it is very profitable for traffickers in two dimensions; it is characterized by lucrative profit and almost no risk of arrest. More specifically, human trafficking is often considered as an incognito industry, meaning that most traffickers and their activities are unknown to the authorities.
Forced Labour
Forced labour is any form of services or work given by the victim most of the time without their volition. It is therefore clear that under the general idea and umbrella of “Forced Labour” there are certain forms one can distinguish. Firstly, the most wide-spread form of forced labour is bonded labour. Bonded labour occurs when a trafficker tricks the victim into offering their services with little or no pay with the pretext of the victim repaying for a loan he/she had previously taken from the trafficker. Specifically, victims sometimes live under the traffickers’ surveillance and are threatened by them so as to ensure that they will stay. This method of forced labour has been used for years since it is commonly transferred through the generations. Other forms of forced labour are domestic servitude in which victims offer services within their traffickers’ household. Forced labour most commonly occurs in the private sector; however, it is shocking that 2.2 million victims are involved in state-imposed forms of forced labour. In the private section it most often occurs in agriculture, such as cocoa and coffee production as well as hunting forestry and fishing activities. It also occurs in the industry sector such as mining and manufacturing.
Child Labour
It is important to understand that child labour does not refer to any work that is done by children that does not interfere with their education, personal development and health. With that being said, child labour refers to services or any form of work that deprives children from their education (being obligated by traffickers not to attend or even to leave school prematurely), their potential and dignity (being socially, physically or/and morally dangerous to the children) and is also harmful to their mental and physical development. It is important to understand that child labour is not a form of human trafficking in itself. Child labour includes both methods of sexual exploitation as well as forced labour. However, what distinguishes it is that it happens to underage people. To be
For Agenda research the delegate is suggested to consult the following sites: Reuters www.un.org Human Rights watch Amnesty International Transparency International IMF , World Bank for economic related world issues ICJ (international Court Of Justice) for legal issues Other UN bodies such as WTO, WHO etc For country research the delegate can refer to the following: CIA World fact Book BBC News Country Profile
