Reject flawed proposal to create new human-rights panel

By Frida Ghitis
March 3, 2006
The Miami Herald
Original Source: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14005427.htm
 
The first time you walk into the United Nations, you can't help but get a little choked up. As you approach, a carving on the wall of a nearby park reminds you of the hope-filled prophecy from Isaiah: ''They shall beat their swords into plowshares. Nation shall not lift sword against nation.'' Then, with the building before you, you hear the drumbeat of all the member nation's flags fluttering above. Inside the courtyard, the sculpture of a giant pistol with its barrel tied into a knot is yet another symbol of the world's hopes, not just for the institution, but for itself, for a planet where conflicts are solved without war; where despotism, war and cruelty can one day be banished.

Despites its failings, the United Nations still embodies our aspirations for a better future. The sounds of dozens of languages spoken by representatives from scores of countries still evoke the dream of a place where the world can come together to fight for our highest ideals. And nothing in the history of the world body has ever betrayed those ideals more tragically than the grotesque U.N. Human Rights Commission.

That's why the very flawed proposal for the creation of a Human Rights Council to replace the old commission must be rejected. The proposed council is clearly an improvement over the UNHRC, but it keeps some of the worst aspects of the old body. That's just not good enough. The United Nations is much too important to allow one of its core missions, the protection of human rights, to suffer under the soft bigotry of low expectations.

For years the old Human Rights Commission made a mockery of its sensitive mission. Membership in the UNHRC was the best protection against international censorship for human-rights violations. The membership routinely included countries whose leaders should have been imprisoned, not massaged by diplomatic niceties. Genocidal regimes such as Sudan and North Korea sat around the table with representatives of countries such as Syria, Zimbabwe or Libya.

When Secretary-General Kofi Annan finally put in motion a plan to abolish the commission and replace it with a worthy body, a ray of hope came over the United Nations' horizon. Negotiations to create the new entity have been arduous, and there is no question that finding a formula to please 191 countries is no easy matter. But the solution brought by the General Assembly president last week is simply not good enough. Its number one problem is that it still allows the worst violators to join the rights council. Much has been made of the provision that would allow for a review of the membership, and could potentially suspended violators.

But the reviews will take years. As Hillel Neuer of the monitoring group U.N. Watch noted, ''When the council created by this draft meets, the faces around the table will look awfully familiar.'' Neuer adds that Annan ''had called for radical surgery,'' and the proposal ``offers to give the patient two aspirins and wheel him back into the street.''
There are other problems with the proposal. Everyone acknowledges that. And yet, major human-rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch support its approval. A letter from a dozen Nobel Peace Prize winners, including Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter, also called for its approval. But why approve a plan that is so flawed on a matter that is so crucial?

Perhaps they believe that this is the best we can achieve. Or maybe they think that this is a way of supporting the organization. This, however, is the time to create the best possible human-rights body for the sake of those who suffer the worst abuses and for the sake of the United Nations. That time will not come around again soon. This is the time to make the United Nations a place that brings a surge of emotions, not for a beautiful dream lost to cynical politics, but for one we may yet bring to fruition.

Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs.