Emotions in International Assemblies
Debating Human Rights in the UN Human Rights Council 1

Jascha Grübel2, Simon Hug3, Christoph Steinert4

Paper prepared for presentation at the ISA 2025 Annual Convention - March 2nd - March 5th 2nd, 2025
First version: September 2025, this version: Sep 22, 2024

Abstract

Debates in international assemblies can become heated at times. This is reflected in the language used by speakers and the emotions expressed in their speech delivery. Scholars interested in international assemblies have not yet, however, taken full advantage of video recordings to systematically study debates from this perspective. This study draws on quantitative text analysis methods and recent developments in automated emotion recognition to analyze the content and delivery of speeches in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Given that international debates on human rights norms are highly emotionally charged, this is a promising context for studying emotions in international assemblies. Initial results suggest that emotions come more to the forefront in debates on proximate topics and are especially detectable for speakers with direct stakes in the debated topic. Thus, we contribute to our understanding of the role of emotions in international assemblies and, shed light on variation in the type and intensity of expressed emotions across topics and countries. Moreover, the study provides novel insights into the degree of international polarization of different human rights norms, which leaves observable traces in delivery of speeches in the UNHRC.

Footnotes:

1Research assistance by Léa Meyer and funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant: CRSK-1_221139/1) is gratefully acknowledged. The design of the study has obtained approval by the IRB of the University of Geneva (CUREG-20231101-336-2).
2 ETH Zurich & Wageningen Uiversity jgruebel@ethz.ch & jascha.gruebel@wur.nl
3University of Geneva simon.hug@unige.ch
4University of St. Gallen christoph.steinert@unisg.ch

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