inside the glass house

UN Human Rights Council: Double standards on who’s in and who’s out
NEW YORK-- US Ambassador John Bolton, once described by the New York Times as a "human wrecking ball" bent on destroying everything that crosses his path, is readying for another battle-- this time over the creation of a new UN Human Rights Council.After several months of intense negotiations, General Assembly President Jan Eliasson produced a draft proposal last week that seems a compromise between the developed and developing nations over one of the most sensitive issues in the world body: human rights The United States, an inveterate champion of global democracy and a vocal promoter of human rights, lost its moral standing when it violated basic civil rights of terror suspects and even the Geneva conventions on the rights of prisoners-of-war, in its fight against terrorism.
A team of UN investigators released a report early this month in which they said the treatment of prisoners at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay violated international law, and in some cases constituted a form of torture in violation of the UN convention against torture.

The investigators have urged the Bush administration to close down that military facility which once held over 750 suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But so far only 17 are to be tried by a military commission and all others are being held without a trial, some for over three years.

Under such circumstance, what moral authority does the US have in criticising others while it publicly justifies its own violations in the name of fighting terrorism?

The US has argued that membership in the new Human Rights Council should be voted upon by two thirds of the 191-member General Assembly-- primarily to keep out what the Bush administration calls "habitual human rights violators" such as Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma and Cuba.
But the compromise formula calls for the election of members only by an absolute majority-- meaning 96 votes out of 191.

Asked about reports that Bolton had indicated he may want to re-open negotiations, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters that Eliasson has had extensive consultations with member states before presenting the draft resolution.

"I would suggest that the member states have had enough time to discuss it; the issues are known, and now is the time for a decision," Annan said, brushing aside Bolton's comment that there was need to re-negotiate because of "deficiencies" in the existing proposal.

Eliasson is expecting the resolution to be adopted unanimously but the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) is insisting on a strong operative paragraph on ''blasphemy,'' arising out of the controversial caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in European newspapers last month.
The 25-member European Union has expressed reservations over the OIC proposal leading to another political stalemate.

The proposed new 47-member Council, which will replace the existing 53-member much-maligned Human Rights Commission, is being touted as the supreme U.N. body that will deal year-round with human rights abuses worldwide-- unlike the existing body which met only periodically.

''Despite the fact that the draft (resolution) does not reflect everything that I called for when I proposed a new Council, nearly a year ago, there are important elements in it that ensure that the Council will be more than a cosmetic change,'' Annan told reporters.

The text makes it clear, he pointed out, that members of the new Council, elected individually by the General Assembly, "must be committed to the promotion and protection of human rights.''

It also makes it clear that the rights and privileges of members can be suspended if they themselves commit gross and systematic violations of human rights. This has not been the case with the outgoing Commission.
The membership of the new Council shall be based on equitable geographic distribution and seats shall be distributed among regional groups: 13 for the African Group; 13 for the Asian Group; eight for the Latin American and Caribbean group; six for the Eastern European Group; and seven for the Western European and Other States Group.

All members, who will have term limits, will serve for three years but will not be eligible for immediate re-election after two consecutive terms.
''When electing members of the Council, member states shall take into account the candidates' contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments made thereto,'' says the draft resolution.

The General Assembly, by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting, may suspend the rights of membership in the Council of a member of the Human Rights Council that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights.

Perhaps the most telling comments came from Phyllis Bennis, a senior Fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, who said that at the end of the day, UN human rights arrangements reflect the stark reality that the United Nations is an intergovernmental-- not an international-- institution.

"That means that the interests of people will remain secondary to the interests of governments," she said. The composition of the new Council will not likely look very different from that of the old Commission. ''That reality reflects the failure of the John Bolton-led U.S. effort to impose an entirely new human rights infrastructure on the United Nations, one that would privilege those countries given a seal of approval by Washington to serve on the Council, with others, especially those in bad graces in Washington, prohibited from serving,” she said.

In practice, that would have meant that US allies-- regardless of their human rights practice-- would be welcome on the Council, while Washington's strategic adversaries would find their human rights records enough to keep them off.

Back to Columns