UN's Ability to Overhaul its Human Rights Role Questioned By Patrick Goodenough February 8, 2006 Cybercast News Service Original Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstory.asp?Page=%5CForeignBureaus%5Carchive%5C200602%5CFOR20060208a.html (CNSNews.com) - As negotiators wrestle over how a new human rights council at the U.N. should look and work, some scholars believe the U.S. should seek alternatives outside the world body rather than settle for a new rights entity hampered the same problems that blighted its discredited predecessor. Reports on the negotiations indicate that the U.S. is struggling in its efforts to ensure that the new council will be a streamlined body whose members are elected by a two-thirds General Assembly vote and meet a high criteria with regard to their own human rights records. Some developing countries -- among them Cuba, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Egypt -- are pushing for larger membership, a lower threshold for entry, and they want it to be harder for the council to pass resolutions critical of specific countries. These are some of the very issues blamed for the ineffectiveness of the outgoing U.N. Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), whose membership has included regimes bent on heading off resolutions critical of their own records. The commission is due to hold its final session from March 13 to April 21, in Geneva. U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton told a recent press briefing that the U.S. was not interested in a few cosmetic changes to the UNCHR. We want a butterfly, he said. We don't intend to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a success. But whether the U.S. will get its way appears far from certain. For instance, Bolton told the General Assembly last month that as the 53-member UNCHR was too large to be effective, Washington preferred its replacement to have 20 members, although as a demonstration of flexibility it was willing to accept up to 30. Three weeks later, however, the latest draft proposal circulated by a U.N. committee tasked with negotiating a text provides for the new rights council to have 45 members. 'Open to all' On another score, Bolton said any country under Security Council sanctions for human rights violations or terrorism should be categorically excluded. That position was underscored by Senate foreign relations committee chairman Richard Lugar in an address to the Security Council on Monday, when he put at the top of a list of 10 essential U.N. reforms the establishment of a rights body with membership criteria that will bar repressive or Security Council-sanctioned regimes. But the latest draft says membership shall be open to all U.N. member states. The concession to the U.S. stance on criteria is that systematic and gross rights abuses by a candidate country or the existence of U.N. measures against that country for rights violations, should be taken into consideration by member states when voting. The draft leaves unresolved, for now, the issue of whether the members should be elected by a two-thirds majority - making it harder for offenders to get onto the council - or by a simple majority. Anne Bayefsky, editor of the Hudson Institute's Eye on the U.N. project, responded to these developments by noting this week that in case of countries like China, Saudi Arabia and Cuba, there are no U.N. measures in place because the UNCHR has for 40 years adopted no resolutions criticizing their rights records. Bayefsky also pointed out that even if a two-thirds majority was required, the Group of 77 and China, whose members account for 69 percent of the U.N.'s 191 members, would have sufficient votes to ensure that any states it chooses would be elected. Another issue that raised human rights advocates' concern was a proposal by Bolton that the permanent five (P5) Security Council members - the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China - be guaranteed membership of the new council. Bolton explained to journalists that the move was designed to prevent a recurrence of the situation the U.S. found itself in in 2001-2, when it became the only P5 member ever to be voted off the UNCHR since the body was founded in 1946. But Bolton's proposal highlighted a dilemma facing the U.S. - in order to ensure permanent membership for itself, the workings of the U.N. system meant it would also have to tolerate permanent seats for China and Russia, both frequently accused of rights abuses. The inclusion of Russia and China, Heritage Foundation fellow Joseph Loconte wrote in a commentary last week, almost certainly would quash the larger objective of having stable democracies dominate the U.N.'s human rights machinery. The latest draft text does not incorporate guaranteed seats for the P5, but Bolton has predicted that Russia and China will have seats on the new council regardless, noting they had been longstanding members of the UNCHR. Outside the UN That's precisely the type of inevitable outcome that has prompted some scholars to question whether the U.N. - comprised as it is of democracies and dictatorships, all with equal voting power - is the right location for human rights architecture. Brett Schaefer, also of the Heritage Foundation, said in a separate commentary that as it was unlikely the new council would exclude rights abusers and dictatorships, it was time to reject a U.N.-centric international human rights system. Instead, advocates should seek to establish a human rights body that is independent from the U.N. and open only to democracies that respect political and economic freedom. Loconte echoed the argument, asking: Shouldn't the task of defending fundamental human rights be limited to democratic states with a measurable record of success? And if such an alliance can't function effectively within the United Nations, isn't it time to consider operating outside of it? He cited several other scholars, including Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute, who in a 2005 book, The Future of the United Nations, wrote that the U.N. was a model of hypocrisy, thanks largely to its record on human rights. Muravchik suggested that the political U.N. be scrapped, while the world body continues to focus on humanitarian work and serve as a forum for international discourse and informal diplomacy. A group of democracies could form a human rights body to forthrightly condemn and publicize egregious abuses, he said. In an op-ed piece published last December, Ruth Wedgwood, professor of international law and organizations at Johns Hopkins University, said that while America should still support the purposes of the U.N., we do have some flexibility in how we choose to approach international cooperation. On issues where the global organization is impotent or counterproductive, we can make progress through regional organizations and informal coalitions, she said. We can give greater support to regional human rights groups, instead of seeking consensus with political thugs at the Human Rights Commission.