Project
The UN and its Discontents
The project aims to explore little-studied dynamics among and behaviour of UN member states and staff members that constrain the organization, and render it resistant to meaningful reform and vulnerable to achieving sub-optimal results, against two possible overall hypotheses:Hypothesis 1: The UN’s underperformance is rooted in structural tensions: a) between sovereignty-based principles and between expectations that the Secretary-General needs a degree of policy autonomy; b) between a UN that relies on member states for funding and backing and a UN that is tasked to uphold set of universal human rights norms; and c) tensions over the nature of UN legitimacy.
Publication
The UN Optional Protocol on the Abolition of the Death Penalty
Bossuyt, Marc 2018. The UN Optional Protocol on the Abolition of the Death Penalty. Margaret M. DeGuzman and Diane Marie Amann, Eds., Arcs o...
Project
South Africa and the emergence of international human rights
South Africa has played a leading role in the development of international human rights in very different and sometime diametrically opposing capacities.
