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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2020
As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay looks at the UN's human rights efforts through the lens of the ethics of survival, normative ethics, the ethics of protection, institutional ethics, and the ethics of the human predicament in the face of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The essay finds that while the consecration of the right to life has made a contribution to the ethics of human survival, the overall impact of the human rights program has been marginal. Normative ethics shows the UN performing magisterially in drafting and adopting a body of international norms for the universal protection of human rights. However, when it comes to the ethics of protection, the UN performs poorly because of the numerous oppressive governments that control the world body. On the ethics of the human predicament, this essay finds that SDG 16, which is devoted to development, peace, justice, and strong institutions, has so far had little practical impact. Gross violations of human rights continue to take place in numerous parts of the world.
1 Lee, Kai-Fu, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018)Google Scholar.
2 UN Human Rights Committee, “CCPR General Comment No. 14: Article 6 (Right to Life) Nuclear Weapons and the Right to Life,” adopted at the twenty-third session of the Human Rights Committee, November 9, 1984. See also the HRC's General Comment No. 36 on the same topic: HRC, “General Comment No. 36: Article 6 (Right to Life),” CCPR/C/GC/36, October 30, 2018.
3 International Court of Justice, advisory opinion on Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, July 8, 1996.
4 HRC, “General Comment No. 36.”
5 See Carmichael, Gershom, Natural Rights on the Threshold of the Scottish Enlightenment: The Writings of Gershom Carmichael, ed. Moore, James and Silverthorne, Michael (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002)Google Scholar.
6 On this, see Hanqin, Xue, Chinese Contemporary Perspectives on International Law: History, Culture and International Law (Hague: Hague Academy of International Law, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Antόnio Guterres, “Progress toward Sustainable Development Is Seriously Off-Track,” Opinion, Financial Times, November 4, 2019.
8 This is based on interviews this author has had with senior UN human rights officials.
9 See UN General Assembly, “Declaration on the Right to Development,” A/RES/41/128, December 4, 1986, undocs.org/en/A/RES/41/128.
