In a world dominated by great powers, the UN human rights system still has one last lifeline: strength in numbers, writes Rapha\u00ebl Viana David, human rights advocate at the International Service for Human Rights.<\/p>\n
Mark Carney\u2019s recent Davos speech captured, with unusual candour, a difficult truth: the world is reorganising around great-power competition outside UN rules. For everyone else, racing to please one or both sides is a losing game. The latest outbursts of Trumpian imperialism in Venezuela, Iran and over Greenland did not create this dynamic, but pushed it into the open, reinforcing instincts to hide behind fortresses rather than invest in collective rules.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Major powers have trampled international law before, but seldom with such naked disdain<\/a>. The enforcement of international law and human rights has always relied less on policing power than on moral leverage and the political will of influential states. Both are rapidly eroding as slashed aid funds, weakened economies and frail credibility over double standards on Gaza\u2019s genocide and US aggressions hollow out part of the west\u2019s ability to lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, rich, rights-averse states like China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates continue to grow in influence. The rest are busy navigating a fractured landscape, leaving human rights multilateralism largely defenceless.<\/p>\n This is compounded by the UN\u2019s liquidity crisis<\/a>, with Trump holding the organisation\u2019s finances hostage just as Beijing and Moscow seek to defund its human rights work<\/a>. But let\u2019s be clear. This is not a UN crisis \u2013 it is a states\u2019 crisis. Blaming the institution for the failures of its members lets governments off the hook.\u00a0<\/p>\n China stepping in<\/p>\n Unilateralism creates a vacuum, and Beijing has moved methodically to fill it where the US had withdrawn. Its new coalition<\/a>, the Group of Friends of Global Governance, recently launched at the General Assembly, offers appealing promises of \u201ctrue multilateralism\u201d. But China\u2019s playbook is well documented by those of us who closely observe UN spaces: gutting<\/a> human rights budgets, punishing<\/a> those who cooperate with the UN, rewriting progressive rights standards, opposing inquiries into atrocity crimes and reshaping the system around friendly intergovernmental cooperation instead of scrutiny. It was Chinese and Saudi lobbying that produced the two only occasions in the Human Rights Council\u2019s history where initiatives on mass atrocities \u2013 in Xinjiang and Yemen, respectively \u2013 were ever defeated by a vote. Beijing is now building support for an upcoming declaration at the Council on Global Human Rights Governance.\u00a0<\/p>\n But our desperation to find alternatives to US leadership shouldn\u2019t rush us into the arms of tomorrow\u2019s despots and a distorted vision of multilateralism stripped of meaningful human rights scrutiny. Instead, we need committed human rights actors to rise.<\/p>\n The power of multilateralism and coalitions<\/p>\n Human rights progress has never depended solely on great-power benevolence. It was also built on the power of truth-seeking, public pressure, stories that appeal to our common humanity and committed individuals and movements.<\/p>\n The UN remains central to this theory of change. Dismissals of the UN as broken or biased miss the whole truth. Despite severe constraints, UN human rights bodies continue to deliver tangible impact, assisting governments in improving laws and policies, in areas ranging from AI to climate change to fiscal justice. In a fragmented world, the HRC is also a rare space for dialogue among governments, able to investigate atrocities that the Security Council has failed to address.<\/p>\n Arrangements imposed through force or unilateral action may offer short-term stability, but ignoring human rights root causes merely defers conflict, which is why the Board of Peace and similar elitist pay-to-play clubs that seek to manage conflicts like real estate investments are doomed to fail. They can, however, inflict much damage on the UN\u2019s legitimacy if we don\u2019t react.<\/p>\n If the problem lies with states, so does the solution. This is where the Carney doctrine matters. At the UN, small and medium states alike hold real power under the one-country-one-vote principle. Global south nations played a pivotal role in shaping a fairer, more democratic UN system, advancing decolonisation, forging stronger human rights standards and ending inter-state conflict in regions such as Latin America. That history is worth reclaiming.<\/p>\n What is needed is a UN coalition in defence of a human rights multilateralism that is democratic, inclusive, centred on the needs of victims and of states, and that safeguards the independence and effectiveness of its human rights bodies.<\/p>\n Such a coalition could rebuild the global levers that allow for human rights progress: upholding human rights as our moral compass, preserving international law as our social contract and restoring political will to tackle all crises without distinction. Where no country, small or medium, can speak up alone, strength in numbers reduces the political cost of taking a stand solidly aligned with human rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n It should urgently strengthen the HRC<\/a>, secure stable funding for UN rights bodies and commit to consistent responses to all crises based on objective criteria, not politics.<\/p>\n