You Know You're in Law School When..

Here's something you probably didn't know. When the United Nations receives communications about human rights violations, two resolutions of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) govern: Resolution 728F which explains why the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has no power to take any action, and Resolution 1503 which provides confidential procedures for analyzing the communication. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights summarizes the communication for compilation in a confidential list, and submits the communication (with author unidentified) to the government of the country concerned. Then the Working Group on Communications (a sub-group of the CHR, itself a sub-group of ECOSOC, consisting of 5 members, 1 each from 5 regions) has a 10 day session, reviews 400-500 files (from 20-25k received), and with a majority vote refers the communication to the Working Group on Situations. Then the Working Group on Situations (5 diplomats from among the CHR member countries) meets prior to the annual CHR meeting, decides which country situations to refer to CHR and drafts recommendations for how to handle them. Then the CHR meets in private session, with just the CHR members and a representative of the country under discussion, and has one of three options: a) Keep situation pending for 1 year; b) Drop the matter; c) Permit CHR to consider the matter in public session.

What lessons should you take from this inane lecture?

1) Law school sucks
2) The U.N. is worse