Policy Briefs

"Assessing the 2012 UN Human Rights Council Elections” evaluates the 18 candidates running for seats on the UN Human Rights Council to determine if they meet the UN’s stated criteria that members must “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.”

The U.S. Congress should fully fund the Administration’s request for $56 billion to support international affairs for Fiscal Year (FY) 2013, a 2% increase over FY 2012.[1]  This budget is one of the primary tools the United States uses to maintain leadership abroad, pursue its international priorities and promote American values.

As Americans display growing fatigue over costly military interventions abroad, the Obama Administration has appropriately placed greater emphasis on diplomacy and development to advance U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives. In order to do so effectively, a robust foreign assistance budget is needed, along with carefully targeted use of available funds.

A little more than two years after the United States took its seat for the first time as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, debates persist over whether it should have continued the Bush administration’s policy of disengaging from the UN’s primary human rights body. This debate largely revolves around the issue of whether the council is a fundamentally flawed structure, and if so, whether the presence of the United States gives it undue legitimacy. 

With nearly two months to go before constituent assembly elections, Tunisia confronts a long list of challenges to the creation of a democratic system. Expectations for swift and wide-ranging reforms are very high among a population hungry for change after decades of harsh authoritarian rule. Ordinary citizens are eager to enjoy the benefits of meaningful political freedom and economic prosperity, having endured unrelenting repression, mismanagement, and the plundering of resources by a small circle around the family of former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The political uncertainty in the wake of the dictator’s departure has taken a toll on the Tunisian economy and its tourism sector in particular, on which some 500,000 people in this country of 10 million depend for employment. The ongoing conflict in neighboring Libya is another encumbrance, as it deprives Tunisia of much-needed trade revenue and generates regional instability.