Self-Legitimation Through Naming and Shaming: Evidence from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2006–2026

The Human Rights Council still faces the charges that dissolved the Commission it replaced, and the states with the worst records still escape its scrutiny. Yet the Council is not the only body in the United Nations that names and shames violators, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who does so from the Council’s own podium, has been largely ignored by political scientists. I analyze the High Commissioners’ opening statements to the Council from 2006 to 2026 and propose a constructivist “self-legitimation” account, in which the High Commissioner answers the legitimacy deficit of the Council it serves by naming and shaming the violators that the Council will not touch. The analysis finds that the High Commissioner names and shames the powerful rather than sparing them, with permanent members of the Security Council named ten times as often as equally repressive non-permanent-member states, and this is equally evident among the Western permanent members and among China and Russia. Tested alongside three competing accounts, the evidence finds no support for a realist perspective, as power neither deflects the office’s attention nor softens its language, or for a constructivist “social conformity” perspective, as peacekeeping buys no leniency, but supports a liberal “reputation” perspective, as treaty-bound states are named twice as often as comparable states.