Vote Contestation at the United Nations Human Rights Council

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) features a high share of contested votes on resolutions compared to the General Assembly. Scholars have identified various human rights issues that experience contestation and have suggested explanations, but those have not been verified through systematic studies. This article presents the first content analysis of all 1,338 resolutions adopted by the UNHRC until 2021 by computing the average vote contestation for every single word and word pair appearing in the resolution text. The resulting dataset enables nuanced verification of hypotheses for the contestation of issue areas, country mentions and language strength. I find that resolutions on women’s rights issues enjoy consensus, and even physical integrity rights like torture are not contested heavily. The UNHRC also criticises countries directly, albeit selectively. Instead, the highest contestation is experienced by resolutions on interventionism and economic rights, where the Global South challenges Western hegemony.