The U.N. & Human Rights

Evolution of United Nation’s involvement in global human rights. Interventions, aid, military presence, leadership, obstacles.The United Nations deals with human rights questions either through the use of preventive diplomacy and public pressure or, more rarely, through direct intervention (Boutros-Ghali 912). Increasingly, however, it has become difficult in many cases to separate the protection of human rights from either direct military intervention or from missions to provide humanitarian aid. UN interventions take place where there is a very serious need for humanitarian aid (as in the recent mission to Somalia) or a need for an outside force to broker peace and keep ceasefires in place (as in the current intervention in Bosnia).

The UN does not directly intervene in most cases where a sovereign state is engaged in the regular, daily violation of the rights of its citizens. in those cases the UN works from outside by attempting to provide aid, relief and education, by imposing…