Sue For Libel?

There we are, assurance that the United Nations is not about to change anytime soon. It's core function is support for human rights. Its existence resulted from the modern world's worst excesses in human rights malfunction. With the revelations of Nazi Germany's embarkation on a determined Final Solution to the intractable world problem of the existence of Jews, so heavily committed to its vision of a Judenfrei world community that it set aside personnel and funding to formulate plans and construct death camps and crematoria for the single-minded purpose of destroying a people through genocidal intent, the League of Nations wrung its hands and transformed itself into the United Nations.

Where the League of Nations couldn't succeed, the United Nations would. The Declaration of Human Rights that the UN adopted was its Bible. And peace-keeping was its purpose for existence. To ensure that war never again lifted its vicious head, the United Nations would present as a forum for international agreement, and the Security Council would instruct world communities on how they could, should and would proceed to ensure that everyone got along nicely together, in a civilized and just manner, observing the niceties of human rights to extend them to their own.

The theory was wonderful, the reality dismal. There was Cambodia, and there was Rwanda, and there was Bosnia, and there was Sudan, and any number of threats and wars and dismal dismemberments of humanity's hopes for justice and equality to prevail. From Africa to the Middle East, eastern Europe to Asia, the message of hope and brotherhood and peace and prosperity simply failed to get off the ground. But the UN and its members are resilient and determined.

And there is always the option of creating special committees and groups committed to furthering the aims of the United Nations, steering a recalcitrant world toward amity and civility. There are, to be sure, the watchdogs, like the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), tasked to monitor the nuclear proceedings of various countries, and there is as well the UN Human Rights Council. The Council's task is to accept elected members and to evaluate and query the human rights activities of member-countries.

This is the second incarnation of an United Nations agency committed to overseeing human rights conditions across the globe. The first one suffered the unfortunate indignity of being recognized as being inherently biased against human rights. Now isn't that amazing? That earlier committee came acrop simply because it was impossible not to notice that most of its sitting members represented egregious human-rights-defying nations. Sitting in critical judgement on others.

The trouble was mostly that they gave a free pass to other countries like themselves who tormented their people, enslaved them, employed extraordinary capital punishment for slight offences against the political system that made their lives living miseries, and focused their attention in a most malevolent manner on civil, liberal democracies for whom human rights represents the highest order of business. The latter offended their own ideas of notional human rights in action, and the former validated their vision of their own hallowed place in the world of human rights' violations.

Tibetans living-in-exile shout slogans during a ‘Tibet Solidarity Campaign’ protest in New Delhi on November 6, 2013. Tensions between Tibetans and the Chinese government continue to run high, with more than 120 members of the minority setting themselves on fire in protest in recent years.   Photograph by: SAJJAD HUSSAIN, AFP/Getty Images

There is a new Human Rights Council, however. One that it was promised, several years ago when it we re-formed from the old, disgraced one, would be far different from its predecessor. So it comes as a disappointment, but no surprise, that the new Human Rights Council that grew out of the Human Rights Commission is a reflection true to the memory of the original. In the latest 'election' to the HRC six countries recognized as among the world's worst human rights abusers were elected.

"This is a black day for human rights. The UN sent a message that politics trumps human rights, and it let down millions of victims worldwide who look to the world body for protection. The UN General Assembly elected egregious human rights abusers China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Cuba and Vietnam to the UN Human Rights Council, dealing a severe blow to the credibility and efficacy of a body that was supposed to improve on its discredited predecessor."
Hillel Neuer, executive director, UN Watch, Geneva

Human Rights Watch cited five of the new council members -- China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Algeria -- as having outright refused to permit UN investigators access to check alleged abuses on their national territory. There are over ten or more unfulfilled requests for visits by UN experts dating back to 2000 by China, Russia and Algeria. While Saudi Arabia and Vietnam each can proudly claim seven outstanding requests.

"Countries that haven't allowed UN experts appointed by the council to visit have a lot of explaining to do", according to Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director of UN Watch's New York group. "It's like hiring someone, then not allowing them to enter the office." A UN Watch report indicated the six countries have failed in freedom, government and treatment of the press. Failures which obviously haven't served to disqualify them from passing judgement on countries that respect human rights in all its manifestations.

UN watcher Anne Bayefsky points out that the Council's permanent agenda consists of "one item designated to the condemnation of Israel, and another to the remaining 192 UN members -- if they should 'require the Council's attention'". Each of the 192 UN members has the opportunity at some point to participate on one of the UN's five regional bodies, with the sole exception of the State of Israel, the perpetual outsider, thanks to an influential political clique demonizing it into eternity.

In late May when UN human rights chief Navi Pillay opened a Council session she listed those countries recognized as having human rights crises requiring the Council to direct criticism toward them. The list was: Syria, Myanmar, Iraq, the Central African Republic, the United States, and Israel.
Egypt, Libya and Yemen on the other hand, were approvingly said to be "progressing in different ways and at different speeds."


COLOMBO, SRI LANKA - NOVEMBER 13: A woman belonging to the Sri Lankan minority Tamil ethnic group holds up a photo of her son who disappeared during the final stage of the Sri Lankan Civil War between the government and a separatist group that wanted to create an independent Tamil state, during a human rights protest festival on November 13, 2013 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) will take place from November 15-17, amidst pressure from human rights groups urging leaders to boycott the summit until Sri Lanka further investigates charges of war crimes. Both the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper and Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh have confirmed they will not attend. (Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images)