The new United Nations Human Rights Council has just celebrated its first birthday. It replaced the old and discredited Human Rights Commission, which has become a bad joke because it was dominated by some of the worst human rights abusers in the world. But critics say the Council is barely any improvement on its predecessor – and now there are moves in the US congress to try to cut off.
It was a dire indictment of the UN Human Rights Commission when, in 2005, the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called it “a shadow on the reputation of the UN system as whole.”
He was reflecting the opinion of human rights activists worldwide that a commission with Sudan and Zimbabwe as members had to go. It was simply too embarrassing for the UN to have the regimes in Khartoum and Harare shielded by their participation in the UN’s main human rights body. So the commission was abolished and replaced by the Human Rights Council (HRC), based in Geneva.
“I think it would be crazy to say that it has not been a disappointing year,” says Steve Crawshaw of International organisation, Human Rights Watch. “The HRC should have been, if you like, a beacon of human rights. We really hoped that the new Council would move things forward radically. It has, to be honest, failed to do so.”
US opposition
The US government voted against the creation of the HRC, saying countries with the worst records would still be able to get elected to it. “It’s really been a grave disappointment to us,” says Kristen Silverberg, the US assistant secretary of state responsible for US policy at the UN.
“This is a Council that devoted eight different actions to bashing and criticising Israel before it lifted a finger to help people in any other part of the world, including the long-suffering people of Burma, or North Korea, or Zimbabwe.”
The Council passed nine resolutions criticising Israel’s human rights record in its first year but only three resolutions on the situation in Darfur.
Israel is a fault line at the UN. The US, a staunch ally, has used its veto in the UN Security Council to prevent resolutions critical of Israel from being passed.
At the HRC, dominated by developing countries and without the US presence, exactly the opposite happens. Munir Akram, Pakistan ambassador to the UN, says it was legitimate for the Council to spend much of its first year looking at Israel.
“Well, the fact is that there were serious developments on the ground to which the Council responded,” he says. “The Council is a political body and of course it is perhaps the only political body in the UN where you don’t have the veto, as in the Security Council.”
But Kristen Silverberg says the Security Council discusses Israel. “Israel receives more attention and scrutiny within the Security Council than any other country. And that's true not just of the Security Council, it’s true of the bodies of the General Assembly,” she says.
Political nature
There was disquiet amongst human rights organisations when Egypt was elected, a country criticised for torturing political opponents. So how is it possible that countries with bad human rights records should get elected on a body supposed to uphold those very rights?
But Munir Akram says the entire structure of the UN is political –– the Security Council is dominated by Russia, China, France, the United States and Britain, each of which can veto decisions. Therefore, he argues, the developing world looks to exercise power where it can.
Whatever the difficulties with the Council, even its critics argue it is better to have it than not. Despite the rhetoric of idealism, it seems the Council is just another political arena, where the world’s divisions are laid bare.
- NYT