event

Molding a More Effective UN Human Rights Council

Wed. May 17th, 2023
Live Online

Since its founding, the UN Human Rights Council has been both praised as an indispensable platform in which to promote human rights, and criticized as a compromised body that fails to hold perpetrators to account. What have been the Council’s most impressive achievements and most disappointing failures when it comes to defending human rights? At a time when human dignity and liberty are under assault and in retreat in many parts of the world, what more can the United States and like-minded governments do to ensure that the Council lives up to its potential and advances the principles on which it was founded?

Please join us for a conversation with Michèle Taylor, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, and Sarah Yager, Washington Director at Human Rights Watch. Carnegie Senior Fellow Stewart Patrick, Director of the Global Order and Institutions Program, will moderate the discussion.

Political ReformDemocracyEconomyTradeSecurityGlobal GovernanceForeign PolicyNorth AmericaWestern Europe
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
event speakers

Stewart Patrick

Senior Fellow and Director, Global Order and Institutions Program

Stewart Patrick is a senior fellow and director of the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His primary areas of research focus are the shifting foundations of world order, the future of American internationalism, and the requirements for effective multilateral cooperation on transnational challenges.

Michèle Taylor

Ambassador Michèle Taylor was sworn in as U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council on February 22, 2022. She is a lifelong human rights activist and advocate with a determined commitment to service. As a daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Ambassador Taylor brings to the Human Rights Council a profound appreciation for the crucial role the Council can and must play to promote universal human rights and protect human rights defenders.

Sarah Yager

Sarah Yager is the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, and leads the organization’s work on US foreign policy. She served in the Clinton (White House), Obama (State Department), and Trump (Defense Department) administrations, and was the first senior advisor on human rights in the Chairman’s Office at The Joint Staff. For nearly a decade Sarah was executive director of Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), working on civilian protection with the U.S. military and its allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, CAR, Burma, and elsewhere.