The question of human rights is at the heart of the reform of the United Nations. This international colloquium, organised by th Center for research on human rights and humanitarian law (Centre de recherche sur les droits de l’homme et le droit humanitaire (CRDH) of the University Panthéon-Assas Paris II, made it possible to carry out a collective reflection on “the issues and challenges of reform”, by bringing together lawyers, diplomats, international civil servants, independent experts, members of NGOs, from all backgrounds and all sensitivities, with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the International Organisation of La Francophonie.

The aim was to establish with precision and rigor the diagnosis of the current human rights’ “crisis”, more than ten years after the major milestone, the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, in 1993. This general framework constitutes an assessment of the UN system, with its new assets – such as the growing role played by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – and its weak points – such as the “excessive politicisation of the Commission on human rights”.

The aim was -above all- to explore ways of strengthening the credibility and effectiveness of the system, through the reform of the Commission on Human Rights and its subsidiary bodies such as the Sub-Commission on Human Rights, or the rationalisation of the work of the Treaty Bodies, in the light of the proposals presented by the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

This volume, which brings together around twenty substantial studies, based on diverse legal and diplomatic experiences, constitutes both the first systematic analysis of the subject published in French and an open assessment of the future, at a time when a new “Human Rights Council” will replace the Commission on Human Rights, sixty years after its creation by the Charter of the United Nations.