A human rights sham

March 8, 2006
Chicago Tribune
Original Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0603080126mar08,1,5377216.story

The UN Human Rights Commission is set to begin its annual meeting in Geneva next Monday, drawing together some of the most oppressive nations on Earth. No, not to haul them up on charges. They'll be welcomed as members of the commission.

There is no greater symbol of the fecklessness of the United Nations than its Human Rights Commission. Secretary General Kofi Annan knows that. He, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton and many others had hoped to create a more muscular and honest organization to replace the sclerotic commission before it could embarrass the UN again. They hoped to create a new Human Rights Council that would put the squeeze on oppressors, not invite them to dinner parties in Geneva.

Annan offered an excellent proposal last spring to achieve that. But that proposal has been greatly diluted, and Bolton has declared the U.S. will vote against it.

Sadly, that's the right decision.

The proposed council has its share of supporters. They include former President Jimmy Carter, who recently joined other Nobel Peace Prize laureates in a New York Times op-ed that encouraged support for the council.

They're willing to overlook some grave shortcomings in the structure of the council. Those shortcomings, though, almost certainly guarantee that the new council would continue to embarrass the UN and protect rogue nations.

Annan's original proposal required a two-thirds majority vote in the General Assembly for each country up for membership on the council. That high standard was designed to keep notorious regimes like Sudan, a current commission member, and Libya, a former chair, off the new body.

But the latest proposal looks much like the status quo. Individual countries will not stand for election. Instead, slates of potential members will be nominated by regional blocs, without regard to human rights performance or records. Each region will be guaranteed a certain number of seats--which is tantamount to making sure the Sudans and Cubas will still slip in.

Annan envisioned a panel that wouldn't collapse under its own weight. The commission now has 53 members. But the new body would still have 47 members. Good for the dinner parties, bad for getting anything accomplished.

Many UN delegations privately share U.S. misgivings about the heavily diluted proposal, but they fear that postponing a vote would doom the reform effort. Passing this proposal, though, would allow the UN to sidestep a chance for meaningful change and throw into doubt all the larger reform issues that the UN faces.

The best course will be to reject this weak proposal. A vote to create the Human Rights Council, which may come this week, stands as a test of whether the UN members, in the aftermath of scandal after scandal, will demand real change.