The UN’s Farcical Human Rights Council
One of the purposes of the United Nations was to prevent future genocides and human rights abuses. After the carnage of World War II, it was hoped that the worst abuses of human rights might be prevented. However, the discussion and support of human rights has always been influenced by the interests of nations forming the UN Council. Since the ending of the Cold War, the bipolar struggle that dominated the UN has receded and the interests of individual nations have become more obvious.
In the field of human rights this was most evident by the discrediting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). A succession of human rights-abusing governments won seats on the UNCHR, including Sudan, Nepal, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia. The nadir of the UNCHR came as Libya, a gross violator of human rights, obtained the chair leading to protests from human rights organizations. Even the New York Times ended up taking the side of John Bolton against Kofi Annan, a position they would have found hard to adopt on any other issue.
The failure of the UNCHR led to reform, and the Commission’s eventual replacement by the UN Human Rights Council. The resolution creating the new council was seen by the Secretary-General Kofi Annan as a “historic resolution… that gives the United Nations a much-needed chance to make a new beginning in its work for human rights around the world.” It was hoped that some safeguards put in place would effectively police the Council, and prevent the previous failings of the UNCHR. The US claimed reform did not go far enough. John Bolton said, “We did not have sufficient confidence in this text to be able to say that the Human Rights Council will be better than its predecessor.”
Time has proved Bolton right. Currently the Human Rights Council includes such paragons of human rights as Pakistan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China.
Questioning of the new Council’s ability to promote human rights is already taking place at the UN itself. The new Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gave a speech earlier this month, and betrayed doubts about the new organization.
“The question for the Council, however, is whether you are fully meeting the high expectations which the international community has of you. What are those expectations? Most fundamentally, and in line with the very core jurisprudence of human rights, they are that this Council will recognize and promote the universal application of human rights values — and that it will do so without favor, without selectivity, without being impacted by any political machinations around the world.”
Proof of the Council’s failure came three days after the Secretary-General’s remarks. The Council forcefully answered Moon’s question, is the Council “fully meeting the high expectations which the international community has of you”, with a resounding “No.” The UN passed yet another one-sided censure of Israel, an admittedly common activity. Not everybody was happy. Canada, whose admirable John Peters Humphrey was the principal drafter of the original 1948 Declaration of Human Rights, said, “It was regretted that the draft resolution did not fully take into consideration the respective role of all parties and focused on Israeli action without referring to Israel’s right to defend itself. It did not present an accurate representation of the situation. For this reason Canada would vote against the resolution.”
Laughably, Sudan was also able to give its opinion on the resolution: “One could not compare Israel’s daily targeting against women and children with those who were fighting with primitive weapons. These crimes were categorically prohibited by international laws. Sudan did not approve of this targeting of civilians in any place and under any pretext.” This is a criticism that could be well-directed at Sudan itself, with their bombing of Darfurian villages, and now proven arming of the Janjaweed militias.
Time will tell if the new Human Rights Council will trouble itself with the Darfur genocide; it’s predecessor did not.
While the UN was founded with the best of ideals, it has always been hostage to its idealistic inclusiveness. The General Assembly of the UN proclaimed the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights as a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” Yet, even the Declaration of Human Rights did not obtain universal support from the original members of the UN.
While no nation opposed the declaration, the USSR, Soviet supporting states, the apartheid South Africa, and Saudi Arabia abstained. The current concern about the Human Rights Council is just another symptom of this flaw in the UN. Until effective reform at the UN is introduced, including discriminatory views on the human rights standards of its constituent nations, the UN will continue to disappoint those who wish to see the spread of universal human rights.
Scoop Shachtman is a blogger at the group blog Drink Soaked Trotskyites for War, a left wing UK blog that takes its name from a famous insult directed at Christopher Hitchens.
…and…this would be the same United Nations which condemns “Fitna” the film and its producer (Wilders), rather than the terrorists portrayed…?!
This is so true! I have come to the conclusion that the UN should be renamed the United Dictators. What an absolute joke this scurrilous organization has become. Why in God’s name do our countries continue to pay into this sorry swindler’s club?
It is truly amazing the fear that the UN lives in with regard to Islam. I swear, for the life of me I do not understand it as much as I’ve tried.
The present UN has run so far off its original course it is virtually unrecognizable.
The premise of John McCain’s idea for a “League of Democracies” is the correct one. How that League will come about is another issue.
America needs to start distancing itself from NATO (useless) to the likes of the rhetoric that farts from the UN and throw it out of New York. Why we, as citizens, must pay for these idiots to be here is beyond logically anymore.
Professional rabble-rouser’s & sinister evil totalitarians convolute context to assert that democratic nations are as bad as themselves.
Easily promoted by a media who know better, nations like Sudan get away with genocide, while the world asserts America is the real villain.
Perhaps it is time we finally stop wasting our time and especially money, and we leave the UN for a multi-national democratic assembly that can effectively use member funds to really help those in need, and really deal with any nation that really violates human rights.
The pretend America & her allies are the bad guys crowd has so polluted the UN that it is no longer repairable.
I think it’s time that this farce of an institution disbanded.
Too many thugs are being given too large a forum with which to promote their garbage. The civilized world needs to relegate these bozos back into the fringes and let the rest of us get on with advancing humanity.
I cannot understand why the democracies stand for (and pay for) this charade, so brilliantly highlighted by Hillel Neuer. Why are countries that have absented themselves from the UDHR (viz. ALL the OIC countries that signed the Cairo Declaration), allowed on the UNHRC in the first place?
It is not as if this council is merely a waste of time, it is actually doing positive damage by emboldening those who spit on it. Tolerance of bad behaviour never did anyone any good: the brat, his family nor his community.
UN out of US!
juss sayin…
What many people forget is that the world is royally screwed up. Europe, US, Australia, Japan and Canada (you are free to add a few more free nations) are a small minority in the ocean of fascistic regimes. It should not surprise anyone that the union of all the nations is backwards. What does amaze me is why the West adds its weight to to this corrupt organization – let alone funds it. As you may remember, the lesson of WW2 was that the League of Nations was a waste of time – and that free nations should stay together. Hence we got the NATO.
Let the UN fund itself or perhaps some other four letter word that begins in f and ends in k.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
The UN had lost all credibility long before the present buffoon took on the job of General Secretary. Time it was replaced with a league of democracies. Who can offer a sensible reason for allowing third world failed states, dictatorships and theocracies a place at the table? Countries like Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Lybia, Egypt and Somalia have dismal records of human rights abuses. Have you noticed what else they have in common? Islam! What do they contribute to the world in terms of technology, medical advances, education to name but three? Can’t think of anything offhand. And no, educating people on how to be extremists and suicide bombers doesn’t count because violence isn’t an export there is much demand for in the civilised world.
Most and perhaps all human organizations eventually fail, and the UN is a perfect example of how such failure happens.
When they are formed, organizations have well defined goals, and actively pursue them. Those that take part in them tend to be those that share those goals and wish to further them.
As time goes by, these goals recede into the past, and the behavior of a typical organization becomes dominated by the goals and aspirations of its participants. Typically these participants include its managers, its employees, and its owners, or in the case of the United Nations, of its member nations.
Managers and employees of government agencies tend to value their jobs, and their opportunities for “tips” i.e. rewards for corrupt behavior, over all else, including any original goal. Member nations of the UN value their own survival and their own interests over the lofty purposes that were advertised at its creation.
With a human rights panel, most nations have little interest in spending resources on participation. Western nations have little interest in proclaiming their righteousness in this way. The only governments who have such interest are those who see a danger in it, from themselves being named as violators of human rights. These nations have a keen interest in being part of international human rights organizations, and they have a further interest in occupying the time of such organizations with distractions from their own horrible records, such as their campaigns against Israel and the United States.
Thus UN human rights organizations have become defacto committees of Human Rights Violating Nations, and their behavior has become a mockery of language and a disgrace to the United Nations. But this is exactly what should have been expected.
The United Nations has failed miserably in almost everything it has attempted in recent years. How long will it be before it goes the way of the League of Nations?