In 2006, the United Nations General Assembly created the Human Rights Council to replace the badly discredited Commission on Human Rights. Presuming upon their own goodness, national delegations gave the Council more autonomy and arbitrary powers to monitor nations. They did leave intact the treaty monitoring system by which nations that ratified UN international covenants must appear before the corresponding treaty committee about every four years. However, the General Assembly directed the Council to create the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), forming itself into a compliance committee before whom every UN Member Nation is required to appear every four years, to hold them accountable not only to treaty obligations (which may include those they never ratified), but to every goal and commitment approved in UN conferences and summits. The goal of the Council, including through the UPR process, is to hold every nation accountable to their view of “human rights”, which goes far beyond the natural law, Common Law, American or historic understanding of human rights.
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