"The 2015 edition of Freedom House's Freedom in the World reported that observance of civil and political rights saw a decline for the ninth straight year. This span covers the life of the Human Rights Council (the Council), which is specifically charged with promoting human rights. This raises fundamental questions about the Council's effectiveness in promoting those rights globally...
Most blatantly, the Council has failed to shed the old Commission's bias and hostility toward Israel. The Council has one item on its agenda for "Human rights situations that require the Council's attention" and another item for the "Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arad territories" – in other words one item focusing solely on Israel's activities and another on the activities of every other country in the world...
But the unfair and unequal application of human rights promotion is broader than the Council's obsession with Israel; it also extends to where the Council fails to act. Specifically, the body has demonstrated a consistent disinterest in the deplorable human rights situations in China, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and five of the ten "Worst of the Worst" countries for human rights as rated by Freedom House in 2015...
It is a failing that people in free democracies where basic human rights are well embedded and observed can withstand, but is a tragic loss for the billions of individuals around the world who struggle with repression on a daily basis...
The working assumption of the Council and of the well-meaning human rights groups perpetually petitioning it to elevate their niche concerns appears to be that core human rights are universally recognised and, therefore, resolved. But that is sadly untrue - much of the world's population continues to suffer under repressive regimes that wilfully and cruelly deny them basic human rights and freedoms...
In short, over the past decade, the Council has dramatically expanded the scope of its work, particularly on secondary and tertiary human rights "thematic" issues, while neglecting its mandate to address gross and systematic human rights situations in specific countries. The result is an expanding budget for marginal impact outside of the insular, Geneva-based human rights community. This disappointing record – along with a significant level of overlap, repetition, and redundancy between the work and agenda of the Council and the Third Committee of the GA – should lead human rights experts and member states to re-examine UN human rights bodies to improve impact and efficiency.
Millions around the word are denied basic human rights and fundamental freedoms; they deserve a UN human rights system that wants to help them and challenges their oppressors, not a politicised talking shop more focused on abstract or select facets of human rights issues than on the brutal tyranny perpetrated upon people around the world – sometimes by the very governments elected to the Human Rights Council."