Human Rights Council and the UN: Oil and water?
UNITED NATIONS — As they say, “It could have been worse.” The eagerly awaited elections of members for the UN’s newfangled Human Rights Council produced mixed results but raised fresh questions about the ultimate effectiveness of a body which, if not dominated by egregious offenders, will certainly be tainted by their membership.
First the good news. Libya, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, members of the old Commission, did not even put forward their candidacy. More importantly Islamic Iran and Venezuela failed to win a seat in their respective regional groups.
Now sit down, here’s the bad news. Cuba, Pakistan, the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan made the membership list.
The only consolation is that so too did Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The USA who opposed forming the new Council will be glaringly noticeable by its absence when the forum meets in mid-June in Geneva
Kenneth Roth, executive director of New York-based Human Rights Watch was quoted as saying, "Obviously, there are a number of governments that we would prefer not to be there…the spoiler governments which had a history of trying to undermine the protection of human rights through their membership of the old commission, are now a significantly reduced minority."
Let’s analyze the regional group results.
Africa: 13 seats all of which were unopposed.
Algeria, Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia are among the new members.
Asia: 13 seats of which People’s Republic of China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia joined the list along with India, Japan, South Korea, Jordan and Malaysia and the Philippines and others.
Eastern Europe: 6 seats for which there were thirteen contenders. This became messy.
Russia won the most votes (137) but importantly Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Ukraine also made the cut. But so did Azerbaijan who secured a seat over genuine democracies such as Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania, and Slovenia. A disheartened Ambassador from the region told me that the results were indeed disappointing.
Latin America: 8 seats. Cuba won but so did Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, Mexico, and Uruguay. Venezuela lost its bid reducing Castro-wannabe Hugo Chavez to one less pulpit.
Western Europe and Others: 7 seats. Finland, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Switzerland and Canada. The U.S. did not compete for a Council seat. Many observers say Washington would have almost certainly been defeated in the forum.
The reasons are manifold. The UN General Assembly is clearly dominated by the political arithmetic of 191 members, the majority of whom quite bluntly don’t share even the broadest sense of democratic values and political freedoms. Thus for the Council, each member had to be elected directly and individually by a majority (96 votes) of the full membership. Do the math.
HRW’s Roth added, “The new council has better tools and a better membership than the old commission, It’s now up to the members to live up to the council’s potential in their actions and votes to curb rights violations and strengthen protection of victims.”
One can only hope so, as tragically there are so many places from Burma to Zimbabwe where human rights and political freedoms are wantonly abused.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com. |
