Human Rights Botch

March 13, 2006  
The New York Post
Original Source: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/60908.htm


Remember the old saying, Be careful what you wish for - you just might get it? It's proving to be true for those who've been pushing the United Nations to reform its Human Rights Commission. 

Good news: Under prodding by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the world body is set to finally abolish its sorry excuse for a human-rights body - whose members have included such paragons of political virtue as Cuba, Libya and Sudan. 

Bad news: The replacement - a Human Rights Council - is no improvement. In fact, it's worse. 

First, the new provisions are designed to look like reform. But they'll only tighten the control of the body by Third World human-rights violators. 

Worse, they will make it almost impossible for the United Nations to ignore, as it often has, the results of its more embarrassing ventures, like the 2001 Racism Conference in Durban, South Africa. 

Indeed, the council - as things now stand - would be required to promote . . . the followup of the goals and commitments relating to the promotion and protection of human rights emanating from United Nations conferences and summits. With no exceptions. 

The reform plan skews the council's membership against Western nations and in favor of the Third World despots. It also prevents any country from sitting longer than two consecutive terms. 

Roughly half of the current commission's time is taken up with condemning Israel - with the United States regularly running interference. But the reform ensures the absence of Israel's staunchest defender. Indeed, America itself would surely become a major target of the council. 

Israel, by the way, is the only one of the 191 U.N. member states that is barred from the key negotiating sessions when the commission is in session. And the reforms don't change that. 

The plan also mandates that election to the Human Rights Council be by simple majority of the General Assembly - a conspicuous change from the original reform blueprint that Annan unveiled last year, which sought to screen out nations with weak human-rights records by requiring a two-thirds vote. 

This in a body that three months ago could only find 79 nations - just 40 percent of the total membership - willing to condemn Sudan for its barbarous human-rights violations. 

As Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch - the Geneva-based group formed to monitor U.N. compliance with its charter - asks: How can we expect a majority to suddenly support Sudan's exclusion from the new council? 

Indeed, membership will be open to all Member States of the United Nations, regardless of their human-rights record, although the assembly is urged to take those records into consideration. And hope for the best, apparently. 

America's outspoken U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, makes no bones about Washington's position on this absurd notion of reform: We're not going to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a butterfly. 

Not surprisingly, though, the proposal has won enthusiastic support from a bevy of Nobel Peace laureates, including Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu. (Carter, in fact, told the Council on Foreign Relations of his fervent wish that the other members will outvote the United States. And that's exactly what might happen.) 

None of this surprises veteran U.N.-watchers. Hopefully, though, it will cause some of the world body's staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill to wonder whether all the money that U.S. taxpayers pump into this thoroughly discredited outfit really is worth it.