Book Review: Failing to Protect: The UN and the Politicisation of Human Rights by Rosa Freedman

The United Nations was established to safeguard world peace and security, development, and human rights, yet it is undeniable that it sometimes fails to protect the rights of a great many people. This book aims to look at the reasons for that failure. Rosa Freedman offers explanations of how and why the organisation is unable, at best, or unwilling, at worst, to protect human rights. Ben Warwick recommends this read for the understanding of global inaction on grave rights abuses it brings.

Failing to Protect: The UN and the Politicisation of Human Rights. Rosa Freedman. C Hurst & Co. May 2014.

Imagine a family sitting warm, safe, and comfortable at home, when the six o’clock news beams pictures of desperation and gross human rights violations in to their living room. “Switch that off; change the channel”, someone says. “I don’t want to think about that while I eat my dinner”.
A stark, unpleasant, and disturbing picture. Yet Rosa Freedman, in Failing to Protect: The UN and the Politicisation of Human Rights, forces us consider whether the United Nations also ‘changes the channel’ when it is presented with accounts of systematic rights abuses. Freedman, a senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, is the author of authoritative works on the UN Human Rights Council and is very well placed to guide readers through the UN’s complexities. Freedman uses this expertise to uncover the conspicuous contrasts between the calculating, paralysing politics of countries at the UN, and the horrific violations of human rights they discuss. This book shatters any illusion that the UN as it currently stands is a wholly benign agent for change.
Designed to be accessible to non-specialists, the book avoids the endless acronyms, committee names and document numbers that are often a feature of works in this area The aim of the text is to encourage the public-at-large to ‘start asking questions’ (p. xi), and it remains true to this aim by equipping readers with the information needed to engage in central debates. Freeman details the relevant sources of law, and gives user-friendly analogies with domestic legal situations to make the complexities of international law comprehensible. The book is rich with examples of past failures of the UN, and reflects the author’s clear understanding of the finest details of UN architecture. Freedman also analyses the UN human rights machinery, and key conceptual debates (such as those surrounding cultural relativism (ch. 5)), in a way that empowers the reader to form their own view and become involved in the reform projects.

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