Setting Precedents

Well, someone has to do it; weigh a situation and decide whether it accords with the intentions of the matter at hand, and if it is found wanting, set a precedent by refusing to accept the intolerable. And is it not intolerable that the worst human rights violators on this Globe are accorded respect and opportunity to exercise judgement on behalf of the world at large, by and through membership with the United Nations?

That these failed governments which in their excessive and violent triumphs of human rights violations for which the world body seems not to hold them to account, are still offered the right and the privilege and authorized to head committees the purpose of which is to advance international security and human rights. So if a country that prides itself on valuing those verities of trust and justice chooses to exempt itself from the parody, they should be applauded.

The question is how can a self-respecting community of communities overlook the outrageously un-humanitarian values and behaviours of those among them that defy the most basic premises of responsibility and justice? Yet this is precisely what occurs within the hallowed corridors of the United Nations, where countries who represent the most base, vile tyrannies are offered respect.

A country like Iran with its misogynistic, religious-based practises is elected to chair a committee on the rights of women. Libya and Syria sit on the Human Rights Council even while both countries represent violent dictatorships. And North Korea, whose attacks on its neighbours, and record of assisting in the proliferation of unlawful nuclear facilities while leaving its population in the plight of starvation is chairing a disarmament committee.

That these regimes have the support of other, abundant regimes whose own track records on abuse of human rights and violation of their populations' trust, ensures they will be elected to key UN positions; the pairing of these regimes with committees whose purpose is the defence of humanity represents gross hypocrisy. But hypocrisy is the byword of the United Nations.

Canada has chosen now to abstain from active participation of the 65-member Conference on Disarmament, relating to that period of time when North Korea takes the chair, in a routine UN alphabetical-based turn-about of chairmanships. "North Korea is simply not a credible chair of this United Nations body", declared Canada's new Minister of Foreign Affairs.

This is what would be called taking a principled stand. Just one country setting itself apart from all the others by declaring itself unwilling to share an important platform with a country that should be shunned for its anti-humane and irresponsible behaviours in aiding in the proliferation of nuclear weaponry, among other grave offences.

If it sets a precedent, giving anti-democratic, anti-Western nations the impetus to themselves boycott sessions and committees chaired by Western nations, so much the better. The fiction of an allied, universally-purposed, human-rights-supporting body that the United Nations represents itself as would simply suffer the fate it deserves.

A new organization that would adhere faithfully to the concept of peace and security and human rights and emphatically pursue those orders is overdue for creation. The vast sums of support funding that flow into the United Nations from the developed countries of the world which reflect a concern for and obligation toward peace and security and human rights could be re-directed.

And the malfunctioning, malicious, failed nations who prey on their own people and whose governments are concerned only with their acquiring of personal wealth and power, could continue their pretense and posturing, while the entire edifice comes to a halt for lack of funding.