UNA NCA Graduate Fellows Explore Contemporary Challenges
By Katherine Marshall, UNA-NCA Graduate Fellow Program Co-Director; Georgetown UniversityHuman rights seem to be coming under full-scale attack globally. That was the consensus of the 2025-26 cohort of UNA-NCA Graduate Fellows. And that has serious implications for the way the UN system operates, across many dimensions.
UNA NCA’s Graduate Fellows Program meets weekly during the spring semester each year to learn about and explore critical issues facing the United Nations system. The 2025-2026 cohort confronts today’s complex challenges facing the UN and other multilateral institutions, with seismic shifts in financing and institutional alignments. That context sparked lively discussion during a March 20 session that focused on the UN’s human rights organization and work. Enrique Roig (Human Rights First), Paula Boland, and I fielded questions that ranged from the political will to enforce human rights agreements to specific topics related to country and institutional contexts. Specific comments remain within the group. However, given human rights' central role in the United Nations' ethos and the international system more broadly, the analysis by this talented and motivated group offers a helpful window into contemporary challenges and how they are perceived.
Fellows submitted their leading concerns before the session and reviewed a country's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) as an example. What follows is a summary of areas of focus and concern, as well as the emerging “bottom line” challenges facing the United Nations.
1. Human rights, a central pillar of the UN system, are challenged across many dimensions, and institutional checks (judiciary, media, civil society) are increasingly constrained. The global shrinking of civic space undermines the UN’s efforts to advance human rights. Seen in restrictions on journalists, activists, and civil society, limits on freedom of expression, the media, and participation, and democratic backsliding, fellows expressed concern about deepening authoritarian trends and a weakening of the rule of law. Chronic underfunding of key institutions like OHCHR and fragmentation across UN pillars (human rights, development, peace) belie the need to integrate human rights across all UN activities.
2. Glaring gaps between stated commitments and implementation are tied to weak and selective enforcement, frustratingly, since legal frameworks do exist. Political will is the decisive factor that appears. Bottom line: the UN system is strong on norm-setting, but far weaker on enforcement and follow-through. A prominent example is weak responses to gaps in access to education, healthcare, water, and social protection, regional and rural inequalities, and poverty and food security.
3. The UPR system has strengths, but countries accept UPR recommendations but fail to act on them. The international system’s practical accountability mechanisms tend to be rather weak. The UPR's reliance on peer pressure more than sanctions has advantages, but some states appear to use reporting strategically to shape narratives with limited consequences for non-compliance. Strengthening monitoring, reporting, and evaluation, and enhanced civil society participation and shadow reporting can nudge action, but the larger long-term challenge is to bridge gaps between global norms and domestic realities
4. Basic rights violations are especially acute in conflict settings and include the very right to life, security, and protection from violence. Civilian harm, displacement, infrastructure collapse, and conflict-related sexual violence are cases in point. In short, rights are fragile, and widespread violations expose their fragility and the limits of international protection systems.
5. Migration, welcoming of refugees, and ambiguities in the right to asylum are shared concerns. Asylum and immigration policies are increasingly restrictive, and migrant workers are vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation, with common gaps in consular protection and international coordination. Tensions between state sovereignty and protection obligations are central to the trends and challenges. Discrimination and barriers to services heighten exposure to violence and exploitation.
6. Violence against women and girls, including femicide, limits on reproductive rights, and other legal restrictions, affects many women and girls, with patchy responses and evidence of backlash against basic rights. Technology-accentuated gender violence, including deepfakes, needs attention in human rights contexts.
7. Digital access has emerged as a newer and important human right, posing both opportunities and risks (surveillance, censorship, restricted online expression, and unequal access to digital infrastructure). Digital rights are linked to participation, accountability, and democratic governance.
Making rights real through enforcement, institutional capacity, and political will is the central, continuing challenge. Underlying tensions between universal human rights norms and national sovereignty, religion, and cultural values need more appreciation and action, with LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights exposing a lack of consensus on the meaning of fundamental rights. Problems in defining rights pale in comparison to weak shared understandings of the essential nature of rights. Deeply worrying is a perceived global regression, driven by authoritarianism, conflict, and nationalist resistance to international norms. It can only be addressed with appreciation for the intrinsic interdependence of rights: for example, digital access overlaps with democratic practice and women’s rights.
As members of the United Nations family and institutions, we face a human rights landscape characterized by the shrinking of civic space and democratic backsliding, weak implementation and numerous accountability gaps, persistent conflict-driven violations, and a host of new challenges linked to technology. Structural weaknesses in the UN system itself contribute to today’s crisis. The search for solutions repeatedly returns us to the central importance of political will and a robust, widely shared appreciation for the centrality and integration of human rights.
Fellows submitted their leading concerns before the session and reviewed a country's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) as an example. What follows is a summary of areas of focus and concern, as well as the emerging “bottom line” challenges facing the United Nations.
1. Human rights, a central pillar of the UN system, are challenged across many dimensions, and institutional checks (judiciary, media, civil society) are increasingly constrained. The global shrinking of civic space undermines the UN’s efforts to advance human rights. Seen in restrictions on journalists, activists, and civil society, limits on freedom of expression, the media, and participation, and democratic backsliding, fellows expressed concern about deepening authoritarian trends and a weakening of the rule of law. Chronic underfunding of key institutions like OHCHR and fragmentation across UN pillars (human rights, development, peace) belie the need to integrate human rights across all UN activities.
2. Glaring gaps between stated commitments and implementation are tied to weak and selective enforcement, frustratingly, since legal frameworks do exist. Political will is the decisive factor that appears. Bottom line: the UN system is strong on norm-setting, but far weaker on enforcement and follow-through. A prominent example is weak responses to gaps in access to education, healthcare, water, and social protection, regional and rural inequalities, and poverty and food security.
3. The UPR system has strengths, but countries accept UPR recommendations but fail to act on them. The international system’s practical accountability mechanisms tend to be rather weak. The UPR's reliance on peer pressure more than sanctions has advantages, but some states appear to use reporting strategically to shape narratives with limited consequences for non-compliance. Strengthening monitoring, reporting, and evaluation, and enhanced civil society participation and shadow reporting can nudge action, but the larger long-term challenge is to bridge gaps between global norms and domestic realities
4. Basic rights violations are especially acute in conflict settings and include the very right to life, security, and protection from violence. Civilian harm, displacement, infrastructure collapse, and conflict-related sexual violence are cases in point. In short, rights are fragile, and widespread violations expose their fragility and the limits of international protection systems.
5. Migration, welcoming of refugees, and ambiguities in the right to asylum are shared concerns. Asylum and immigration policies are increasingly restrictive, and migrant workers are vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation, with common gaps in consular protection and international coordination. Tensions between state sovereignty and protection obligations are central to the trends and challenges. Discrimination and barriers to services heighten exposure to violence and exploitation.
6. Violence against women and girls, including femicide, limits on reproductive rights, and other legal restrictions, affects many women and girls, with patchy responses and evidence of backlash against basic rights. Technology-accentuated gender violence, including deepfakes, needs attention in human rights contexts.
7. Digital access has emerged as a newer and important human right, posing both opportunities and risks (surveillance, censorship, restricted online expression, and unequal access to digital infrastructure). Digital rights are linked to participation, accountability, and democratic governance.
Making rights real through enforcement, institutional capacity, and political will is the central, continuing challenge. Underlying tensions between universal human rights norms and national sovereignty, religion, and cultural values need more appreciation and action, with LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights exposing a lack of consensus on the meaning of fundamental rights. Problems in defining rights pale in comparison to weak shared understandings of the essential nature of rights. Deeply worrying is a perceived global regression, driven by authoritarianism, conflict, and nationalist resistance to international norms. It can only be addressed with appreciation for the intrinsic interdependence of rights: for example, digital access overlaps with democratic practice and women’s rights.
As members of the United Nations family and institutions, we face a human rights landscape characterized by the shrinking of civic space and democratic backsliding, weak implementation and numerous accountability gaps, persistent conflict-driven violations, and a host of new challenges linked to technology. Structural weaknesses in the UN system itself contribute to today’s crisis. The search for solutions repeatedly returns us to the central importance of political will and a robust, widely shared appreciation for the centrality and integration of human rights.
