THE CZECH REPUBLIC IN THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL 2011-2014

Since its very origins, the importance and desired impacts of international organizations are among the prominent issues of the International Relations discipline. Although much has been written on their contribution to governance in various fields of international politics, including human rights, the individual participation, motives and efforts of states and their transformative effects still remain understudied. Inter alia, this is also true for the elected mandates of states in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which not only affect the international community but also the states themselves. To fill in the gap, the article first attempts to combine the existing tools used for the analysis of the impacts of a state's engagement within this body on its external and domestic policies into a more comprehensive analytical framework. In the empirical sections, the activities of the Czech Republic during its UNHRC mandate in the period of 2011-2014 are examined. The analysis draws primarily on the data from the Reports of the UNHRC on its regular and special sessions during that period. In addition, a comparison is also employed of the key foreign policy documents with the voluntary pledges and commitments adopted as an integral part of the candidacy to the UNHRC. The article concludes that the Czech Republic used the mandate primarily for the fulfilment of its foreign policy goals. Opportunities for changes in the national legislation, as well as for the extension of Czech human rights foreign policy with some aspects of economic and social rights, were missed.