University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation

Authoritarian influence in multilateral institutions—particularly the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC)—is growing rapidly and poses a serious threat to democratic and human rights principles. Repressive governments have worked to undermine mechanisms that are meant to ensure accountability for rights abuses and to transform the United Nations (UN) its related bodies, and other international institutions into fora for mutual praise and exculpation. In this report, Rana Siu Inboden, a member of the IGCC network of scholars working on authoritarian regimes and international institutions, and a senior fellow with the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at The University of Texas at Austin, unpacks what these threats mean and what can be done to stop them.