The wrong approach to rights?

March 2, 2006
The Economist
Original Source: http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_VVSVNVP


The United Nations is mulling over the creation of a new council to replace the discredited Commission on Human Rights. Some think the proposal now on the table, though far from perfect, is worth adopting. America begs to differ





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SAY whatever else you like about John Bolton, America’s ambassador to the United Nations, but he has a way with metaphor. “We want a butterfly,” he said earlier this year about plans to replace the discredited UN Commission on Human Rights with a leaner, tougher Human Rights Council. “We don’t intend to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a success.” But after months of tense negotiations, a tarted-up larva is all he believes he has got. After scrutinising the “final” draft proposals presented to UN members by Jan Eliasson, the (Swedish) president of the General Assembly, on February 23rd, Mr Bolton said that “the strongest argument in favour of this draft is that it is not as bad as it could be.”
This week, events came to a head. Dismissing the UN man's proposals as a “failed draft resolution”, Mr Bolton is pressing for the re-opening of direct negotiations between member states, without Mr Eliasson's mediation, saying that America would vote against the draft if it were put to a vote. While extremely reluctant to restart talks on the actual text for fear that this could open a Pandora's box, Mr Eliasson has agreed to continue consultations in an attempt to reach a consensus. A number of other countries, including Venezuela, Cuba and Belarus, have also expressed their opposition to the draft (though for very different reasons), while Britain, Italy and Belgium, although prepared to accept it, do not want to isolate America, the UN's most important and powerful member.
The United States, along with most other developed nations and human-rights groups, wanted the present 53-member commission, with an open membership that often includes some of the worst violators of human rights, replaced by a much smaller council whose members would be elected by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly on the basis of their human-rights credentials. Instead, the new body has almost as many members (47) and is open to all without restriction apart from the usual UN requirement of “equitable geographic distribution”. Indeed, the regional group with the most solid human-rights credentials—the Western Europe and Others Group, which includes America and various white Commonwealth countries—will now have fewer members than before—just seven, which is less than half the number allotted to violence-riddled Africa, for example (see chart). 
Mr Eliasson’s proposals nevertheless include some big improvements. At present, regional groups can present a “clean slate” of candidates, corresponding to their allotted quota of seats, which is then elected en bloc by a simply majority of the 54 members of ECOSOC, the UN's economic and social committee. Under the new proposals, candidates would have to stand individually and would require the support of an absolute majority of the General Assembly's 191 member states. The vote would be by secret ballot. Furthermore, once elected, any council member found guilty of “gross and systematic” violations of human rights could be suspended by a two-thirds vote of the assembly. 
All the countries in the UN would be subjected to a regular peer review of their human-rights records. First in line would be the members of the new council, who would be judged in part against the “voluntary” pledges they would be asked to make when they stand as candidates. All this may not eliminate all the baddies. As the Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think-tank, notes, not even half the General Assembly's members could agree that Sudan was a human-rights abuser at the height of the atrocities perpetrated by the government-backed janjaweed militia last year. But as a senior British official notes, “the capacity to embarrass is fairly substantial” and, provided the diplomacy is handled sensitively, could therefore act as a powerful deterrent.
To put a stop to the near-permanent membership of countries like Russia, which has sat on the commission without interruption since its inception in 1947, membership of the new council would be limited to just two consecutive three-year terms, albeit with the possibility of re-election after just one year. America objects that this would limit the influence of those with good human-rights records too. It is still smarting from the time it failed to win re-election to the commission in 2001, while serial rights-abusers stayed on. Mr Bolton originally pushed for automatic membership of the new council for all five permanent members of the Security Council. But this would have entrenched Russia and China on the body, as well as infuriating the so-called Group of 77, representing in fact 132 developing and non-aligned countries, who already object to what they regard as the permanent five's excessive power.
Mr Eliasson's proposals include another big improvement. Whereas the existing commission meets only once a year for six weeks, the new council would sit at least three times a year for a minimum of ten weeks, with the possibility of convening emergency sessions on a vote of just one-third of the membership to deal with human-rights crises, such as Rwanda or Darfur, as they arise. 
While admitting that the proposals do not represent everything he asked for, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, insists that they contain enough good elements to build on. “This is not old wine in new bottles,” he says. Like Mr Eliasson, and indeed most UN members, he is loth to re-open the negotiations, fearing a flood of amendments that would end up watering down the proposals even further: “We should not let the better be the enemy of the good.” Human-rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch agree. 
Many are beginning to fear that the whole idea of a new human-rights framework—once described by Mark Malloch Brown, Mr Annan's chief-of-staff, as “the litmus test of UN renewal”, could now founder. Yet, as Mr Eliasson points out, human rights is supposed to be one of the three pillars holding up the UN. “If we cannot agree on a new, more efficient human-rights body, it will have serious ramifications for the whole organisation,” he says. Some, including America, have suggested a “cooling-off period”, giving time for some extra arm-twisting. But with tensions between America and the Group of 77 already so high, this could end up further poisoning the atmosphere.