Saving the Human Rights Council from Itself

Saving the Human Rights Council from Itself

by Una Hardester, Senior Political Analyst at Americans for Informed Democracy
The Internationalist
March 18, 2007

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has had a terrible first year. Inexcusably, it has not condemned the government of Sudan for its support of —and participation in— atrocities in Darfur, nor has it condemned the government of Burma for its campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Karen people and other ethnic minorities in Eastern Burma.

Conservative media in the United States is rife with accusations that human rights activists and organizations are hypocritically turning a blind eye to the failings of the Council. This is simply not true.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other prominent human rights organizations tried hard to downplay their disappointment immediately after the Council’s creation, not because they were pleased with the result —they were not— but because nothing could be gained from trashing the Council prematurely. In the months since, Human Rights Watch in particular has been critical of the Council’s defects.

More than anything, human rights organizations wanted a strong and fair Human Rights Council to replace the discredited and much-loathed Human Rights Commission. For that reason, last year’s World Summit was crucial. It presented the opportunity to create such a body, but, despite the best efforts of then General Assembly President Jan Eliasson, the Council created was only a slight improvement on the Commission it replaced.

United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton complained loudly about the Council, and received much praise for doing so. Bolton's outrage couldn't have been less genuine. Hardly the champion of human rights the New York Times and Washington Post naively portrayed him as, Bolton was one of the parties responsible for the Human Rights Council turning out as it did. Jan Eliasson organized more than thirty meetings for the details of the UN’s new human rights body to be worked out, and Bolton attended only one —the last. By that time, the details of the Human Rights Council were finalized; what a pity, too, because the United States’ proposals were admirable.

It would be unfair to blame Bolton alone for the failure to create an effective Human Rights Council. With the United States literally absent, the European Union member states did not push hard enough for a council that would exclude gross violators from its membership, nor did the progressive states of the Americas, the Pacific, or Asia. And too many of them opted for regional solidarity over principles when it came time to decide how the Council’s members would be elected. If they had been elected by a two-thirds majority from the General Assembly, major human rights violators could have been kept off the Council, but they were elected by simple majority instead. The result was disastrous.

Cuba (the world's largest prison for journalists), Saudi Arabia (where amputation of limbs is still a state-sanctioned punishment), Russia (the third deadliest country for journalists), and China (perennial post-child for human rights abuses of all kinds) managed to gain seats on the forty-seven member Council, as did many other states with terrible (if not the very worst) human rights records. Our government (righteous upholder of human rights that it is) voted against the Council’s creation in the first place, and has expressed no interest in seeking a seat any time in the future.

Much of the criticism of the Human Rights Council has been in terms of its treatment of Israel. A total of eight resolutions condemning Israel for actions in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories have been passed by the body so far. Critics of the Council accuse it of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic bias. Whether these accusations are true or not makes little difference substantively. Israel, like any other state, should be rebuked for human rights violations it perpetrates. However, the Council has so far condemned only Israel, ignoring worse human rights abusers like North Korea, Burma, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, and Russia. This record of singling Israel out (however warranted criticism of Israel may be on its own) does not lend credibility to the Council.

The Council’s biggest shame, however, has been its pathetic action on Darfur. In 2006, the Council passed a weak-worded resolution that described not genocide, but a “serious situation,” and created an assessment mission that was later denied visas to visit Sudan because it included Bertrand Ramcharan, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights with a history of criticizing Sudan. Barred from entering Darfur, the assessment team had to rely on evidence collected outside Sudan (in the refugee camps in Chad and elsewhere) to base its final report on. That report, due to be presented to the Human Rights Council on March 16th, found that the Sudanese “government forces often acted in concert with Janjaweed/militia, including in violations of human rights.” The report continues:

Killing of civilians remains widespread, including in large-scale attacks. Rape and sexual violence are widespread and systematic. Torture continues. Arbitrary arrest and detention are common, as is repression of political dissent, and arbitrary restrictions on political freedoms. Mechanisms of justice and accountability where they exist are under-resourced, politically compromised, and ineffective.

The assessment team’s report contains no new information, but it should carry more weight, politically at least, than the numerous, almost identical NGO and independent UN agency reports on Darfur.

Unfortunately, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (a political organization of fifty-seven states in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and South America) has already rejected the Darfur assessment mission’s report. The OIC holds seventeen of the forty-seven seats on the Human Rights Council, and its members devote a great deal of their time to sheltering states like Saudi Arabia and Sudan from international criticism.

The current session of the Human Rights Council, going on now in Geneva, Switzerland, looks likely to give Sudan a free pass once again.

Critics are already asking, is it time to throw in the towel?

Absolutely not.

Like all the elected bodies of the United Nations, the Human Rights Council is only as good as the member states driving its agenda. The Council can still be reformed, but its progressive member states need to get their acts together.

Too few of the Human Rights Council’s members are democracies, and even fewer are democracies with decent human rights records. Still, the freest countries on the Council should be doing more. In its 2007 World Report, Human Rights Watch argues that Latin America and Europe must become more vocal.

Many countries in Latin America (including HRC members Brazil and Argentina) have gone from ruthless dictatorships to democracies with relatively good human rights records in recent history. They can empathize with transitional states without letting them off the hook for human rights abuses.

The member states of the European Union and the Council of Europe (together accounting for twelve HRC members) have been pioneers in human rights monitoring and enforcement for more than fifty years. They are bound together by the strongest human rights regime in the world, and the international human rights regime desperately needs their voices and their expertise.

For their part, the European states need to remember that the principles they so vigorously defend at home are not European rights, but human rights. They also need to remember that Europe still has serious human rights problems —torture and forced disappearances in Chechnya, and pervasive discrimination against Roma, to name just a few— that no European institution has yet been able to end. Europe still needs the international human rights regime.

Given their histories, the Council’s Latin American member states will have an easier time confronting their peers about abuses than the European states will. It will be especially difficult for the European states to overcome their squeamishness when it comes to criticizing their former colonies. Inevitably, there will be cries of ethnocentrism, “Western” vs. “Eastern” values, and cultural imperialism. Europeans can respond to this by citing their own story: it is one of virtually uninterrupted bloodshed from pre-history to the middle of the 20th century, with just the last sixty years showing that values can be changed and societies transformed to the benefit of all.

Together, the states of Europe and Latin America can act as a counterweight to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. If they join with Council members South Korea, Japan, India, South Africa, Ghana, and Canada, they can more than meet the sixteen-member requirement for calling a special session of the Human Rights Council. The OIC has called three special sessions on Israel. The progressive states should do the same for Sudan and Burma.

When it comes to the rights outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is no room for cultural relativism. The UN Human Rights Council can be saved, but saving it will require fearlessness, unity among progressive states, and an uncompromising devotion to the universality of human rights. Europe and Latin America must lead the effort to save the UN Human Rights Council from succumbing to the fate of its predecessor.

Una Hardester is a political analyst for Americans for Informed Democracy. She writes about current issues in human rights, European affairs, and international law. She can be contacted at una@aidemocracy.org