Libya on the United Nations Human Rights Council? That sounds nuts. But this is the UN. By Thursday evening, with the Obama administration apparently AWOL on this outrage, it may be a done deal.
The United Nations General Assembly is due to vote Thursday on the election of 14 new members to the 47-seat Human Rights Council. Libya is among the candidates with good chances of landing a seat. For a rundown on just how disgusting an “election” this is, check out Anne Bayefsky’s latest article on Fox: Human Rights Just a Joke at the UN — in which Bayefsky enumerates some of the failings of the Human Rights Council as a whole, as well as the abuses of some of the current candidates, including Malaysia, Mauritania, Uganda, Angola and Qatar, as well as Libya.
So much for the UN Human Rights Council, which was set up in 2006 to remedy the rot of its predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights (chaired in 2003 by Libya). The Council has already discredited itself with such grotesqueries as last year’s Durban Review Conference (for which Libya chaired the preparatory committee), the Goldstone Report on Gaza and the push by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (which has taken a special interest in the Human Rights Council) to gag free speech in the name of fighting blasphemy.
But should Libya win this seat, there are wider implications — involving the General Assembly which is about to hold this “election.” Candidates for seats on the Human Rights Council are invited to submit pledges of their commitments to human rights — and after an odd delay, Libya’s note verbale — as UN diplo-lingo has it — has finally been posted on the UN web site. Any UN member state voting for Libya is presumably signing onto the garbage extreme contained in this note verbale plus its annex, which Libya wishes to have circulated as a document of the General Assembly.
The UN link to the note itself is a bit dicey — like a number of things on the UN website, one must sometimes fiddle around to pull up the document. So here’s the direct link, and if that doesn’t work, here’s a pdf version of the Libya Human Rights Note Verbale , pulled from the site.
Highlights include Libya’s statement that “the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya is among the countries that fulfill their obligations regarding respect for human rights and the rule of law.”
Libya brags that it “chaired the Human Rights Commission in 2003″ — which in theory is not strictly accurate, because the chair of the commission was supposed to set aside national affiliation, and serve only the interests of the Council, not those of Libyan tyrant Muammar Qaddafi. But in practice, it was Libya’s regime that chaired the Commission, and Libya’s choice of phrasing here, while probably a slip of the pen, is about as close as this document ever gets to anything resembling the truth. (Libya neglects to mention that its chairing of the Commission in 2003 was so embarrassing, even for the UN, that the Commission was dissolved in the 2006 Potemkin reform that produced the current Human Rights Council).
Libya goes on to say: “More than ever, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya has paid great attention to human rights over the past 30 years.” No doubt. Libya’s regime has worked hard for decades to ensure consistent violations of human rights. An effort on that scale must have required plenty of attention.
The HRC is just a vehicle for attacking Israel. Nothing more, nothing less.
Perhaps one of the most disgusting things I have read in my life concerned the treatment of the Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor while being held in Libya. While much is made of the Palestinians at the HRC, practically no one in the West has made a point to complain about this particular Palestinian who was falsely imprisoned for several years and tortured the entire time. I won’t post the doctor’s account, but you can view it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnExymuOF4k Warning: the account is graphic.
And you wonder why so many Americans want to get out of the United Nations and see it go someplace else, like France. The UN is SUCH a waste of time, money, and resources that could be used to actually solve some problems all over the world. The UN’s successes are so very few, while its failures are so many. Yet, for some reason, the liberal left clings to this notion that the UN is still relevant (as if it ever was). The liberal left either has a fetish for listening to long-winded bureaucrats wasting other people’s time and money, or they believe that talking a problem to death is far better than doing anything about it. Hmmm, I think they believe in both. But I’m sure there will be a troll out there who actually believes that the UN does serve a useful function. Maybe we can get those people a seat on the UN’s Human Rights Council. I’m sure they’ll learn something if they attend those meetings, like new and creative ways to waste even more time and money. It’s what they do best.
The entire un is a laughingstock to real human rights NGOs, not just the HRC. Anybody who buys the crap that the un spews is either stupid or evil.
THE UNITED NATIONS IS THE MOST CORRUPT ORGANIZATION THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN!! WITH THE VOTING BLOCK OF THE OIC, EVERYTHING THAT COMES OUT OF THE UN IS PRO ISLAMIC DEATH CULT AND THUS ANTI-ISRAEL, ANTI-AMERICAN, AND ANTI-WESTERN!!!
GOD BLESS AMERICA AND ISRAEL
It has become abundantly clear that the United Nations is around to give voice to the maniacal leaders of the world who rant, rave, moan and groan at their meetings, making them feel important, and later, meeting over, back to business as usual. That is why these leaders stay and destroy their country of choice for so long because the United Nations is just a room of voices never sure of right, never sure of wrong.
Does the world really care about the human rights of other people as long as their own rights are intact? No, I think not. Witness how long Saddam Hussein and his cronies were in power killing, torturing, mutilating, disappearing, sickening, repressing and suppressing the many people of Iraq. Years upon years of death and destruction. It took a war to bring him down because the countries of the world could not speak in one voice, united to stop him. Serious consequences meant a longer meeting and a dinner with soup to nuts.
Ask the people of Africa subjected to death by murderous bloodthirsty soldiers of Mohammad, what the United Nations did to stop them. The United Nations feared to call it genocide because it might offend a member in good standing.
It seems that the United Nations has become the voice of the unreasonable, rewarded and pampered, and the United States has become the nation that personifies all that is wrong with the world.
In some insane way there must be some logic to this game, or is it beginning to fall apart?
In my point of view, it fell apart a long time ago. It is only kept on life support by the US and European countries flooding the coffers with our money. Here is the trick; the UN is not there to promote world peace. The UN exists to promote the UN. It is a source of livelihood for many people, and that’s why they dislike unilateral efforts on the part of America, but they are relatively unconcerned by the attacks from genocidal groups such as the Hamas. American work outside the UN undermines their reason to exist and that would take away the gravy train for g’d knows how many people. A Palestinian doctor tortured in Libya does not cause a blip on their radar because it is inconsequential to their mission. Unsubstantiated rumours from the Israeli Arab conflict generates jobs for people. Case in point, how much money was spent on the investigation into what was billed as the Jenin massacre? In the end, after years and millions spent, their findings were simply that it did not happen. But, in the course of the investigation, thousands of people earned a lot of money. It is as simple as that.
I agree with you on one level, but think that without the support of the United States not too many of the other states run by the maniacal thugs would keep the employees of the United Nations clothed and fed in the manner they are accustomed to.
It’s a delicate balance and I think that the United Nations has for now found itself teetering on the side of the unreasonable perhaps because the West for now seems balanced to reason. I don’t know if it will last for much longer since bearing the weight of responsibility for the entire world is a bit much for one civilization.
Claudia, thank you for all your work exposing the UN Oil-For-Food program. This new absurdity isn’t surprising. My sense of outrage has been deadened by overexposure. I would like to remind the readers the former senator Obama introduced a bill to tax U.S. GDP and give it to the UN.
Time to stop giving BILLIONS of our money to the UN..way past time!
It is shameful that we allow our political leaders to keep the US in such a horrid organization.