United Nations Human Rights Council

"The UN Human Rights Council is a complex body. There are times when it does good things, there are times when it does bad things, and there are times when it just does nothing."
"This sounds like a comedy if it were not so tragic. When they sit at the council, they block action for victims in their countries. They block action for victims in other countries. And the election of these dictatorships confers an undue legitimacy that only strengthens the regime and undermines the morale of those who are behind bars or who are active for human rights."
Hillel Neuer, executive director, UN Watch

Egyptian women wave nationals flags and posters of Egypt’s Defense Minister, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi during a pro-military rally marking the third anniversary of the 2011 uprising in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Jan. 25, 2014. The anniversary of Egypt's 2011 uprising brought a violent display of the country's furious divisions Saturday, as giant crowds danced at government-backed rallies and security forces crushed demonstrations by rival Islamists and some secular activists.    Photograph by: Amr Nabil , AP

 

And then there's UN Watch, which once again mounted a conference in a centre right across the street from the UN's Palais des Nations, which is where the UN Human Rights Council meets. This would be the sixth annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. Present were dissidents and activists from North Korea, China, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt and a number of other places in the world not particularly known for their devoted adherence to human rights.

A number of international human rights groups commit with UN Watch to maintain a public focus on the UN's rights council and the members elected to head the council. Their inclusion in the proceedings of the Human Rights Council represents a degradation of the purpose of the council, but does ensure that those who are on its sanctified board are capable of manipulating events to their advantage.

Their own abuses won't be addressed, but they are focused on singling out one nation whose human rights scoreboard is diamond-pure in contrast to their own, but which is targeted time and time and again for vitriolic accusations without substance, and sanctions that make a complete mockery of the purported purpose and work of the Human Rights Council.

This year at the Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, Dalia Ziada, executive director of Cairo’s Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, a co-founder of Egypt’s Justice Party and a leading Egyptian human rights activist, spoke of the winning battle against entrenched virulent sexism within her country.

Chen Guangcheng, the blind "barefoot lawyer" who managed incredibly to escape house arrest in China, finding refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing was present to speak of his trials and tribulations in his native country.

Biram Dah Abeid, founder of Mauritania's anti-slavery movement was there, as well as Ahn Myong Chol, a former prison guard in North Korea's gulag camps turned activist on his escape from North Korea, and Dhardon Sharling, an elected MP of Tibet's parliament in its Dharamsala, India exile, a leader of the Tibetan Women's Association.

Across the street from that gathering members of the UN Human Rights Council will gather. Members of the council include those stalwarts of human rights protection; China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Cuba, all of which were elected to the 47-member council last November. Joining, among other members, Pakistan, Maldives, Kazakhstan, Vietnam and Algeria.

During the November 2013 vote, 175 of the 193 UN member-states voted for inclusion of China. Russia's nomination resulted in an equal number of cast ballots. Half of the countries of the European Union cast their votes for China and Russia. Cuba earned 148 votes, and Saudi Arabia 140. Given the makeup of the council, it wouldn't have been anticipated to censure Russia for its anti-gay legislation.

It remains to be seen, with the fluid situation in Ukraine, how the council will respond.

Because of the recent horrendous attack by ten knife-wielding members of the Chinese Muslim minority in Kunming, any crackdown now on the Uighur community will most certainly be viewed with a great deal of sympathy, acknowledged as a protective feature of China's security apparatus, responding to the atrocity that killed 29 innocent civilians, and injured almost one hundred and fifty other unfortunates.

The council is set to focus on a country that has few defenders, though powerful China is most certainly one of them, and the growing influence of Iran, despite its imprisonments, torture, hangings and civil persecutions of gays, Baha'i and dissenters will scarcely be noticed; yet another supporter of North Korea. The now-stale UN inquiry into North Korea is due to be their focus. Newly released, the 400-page commission report charges the regime with:

"extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation ... etcetera..."

With that startling pedigree of achievements, one might suppose that North Korea might be entitled to represent a constant target for condemnation and sanctions, but one would be wrong. It is always and perennially, another state that receives the most attention by far to be held out as a rogue state intent on human rights violations, and that state is Israel, which by the frequency of its perceived violations of human rights might be thought of as being in a league far surpassing that of North Korea in malevolent dysfunction.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is secure, protected by Russia and Iran, armed by both, alongside Hezbollah, in his pursuit of destroying the lives of Syria's Sunni population. Not too many denunciations coming his way. A decade ago the world was aghast at the news coming out of Darfur and Sudan's president, who led the ethnic cleansing atrocities with the help of mounted Arab attackers was denounced.

But the sentence handed down by the International Criminal Court labelling him guilty of war crimes, a rebuke along with an arrest warrant that the Arab League steadily ignores, enabling him to travel with few restraints or fears of arrest and transfer to the ICC to stand trial, is hardly worth the council's notice.