Rights Council to Get First Test in May
Backers, Detractors of New U.N. Human Rights Council Will Be Watching in May When Elections Held

By Edith M. Lederer
March 16, 2006
ABC News
Original Source: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1731976

The Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS - The new U.N. Human Rights Council will face its first test when members are elected on May 9, with supporters and opponents watching to see if countries that are major offenders win seats and whether the United States will even be a candidate. 
The General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to replace the U.N.'s discredited Human Rights Commission with a new council, ignoring U.S. objections that not enough was done to prevent abusive countries from becoming members.
The council was endorsed by key human rights groups, a dozen Nobel Peace Prize winners including former President Carter, and 170 countries who voted yes on the resolution including a surprise endorsement from Cuba.
The United States was isolated in its opposition, backed only by staunch allies Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau. Three countries whose human rights records have been criticized Venezuela, Belarus and Iran abstained.
After voting no on the resolution, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told the assembly the real test will be the quality of membership that emerges on this council and whether it takes effective action to address serious human rights abuse cases like Sudan, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Burma.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, called on all countries to pledge not to vote for governments that systematically repress their people.
States like Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, or Zimbabwe, which are current members of the old commission, cannot be allowed on the new council, he said.
Austria's U.N. Ambassador Gerhard Pfanzelter, who spoke on behalf of the European Union which supported the council, said its 25 members will not vote for countries under sanctions for human rights-related reasons or countries guilty of gross and systematic rights violations.
The highly politicized Human Rights Commission has been widely criticized for allowing some of the worst-offending countries to use their membership to protect one another from condemnation.
The resolution creating the new council was a compromise between the ambitious vision proposed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan a year ago and the bottom-line demands of the 191 U.N. member states.
While no country got everything it wanted, Annan still called the resolution historic and said it provided a solid foundation on which all who are truly committed to the cause of human rights must now build.
This gives the United Nations the chance a much-needed chance to make a new beginning in its work for human rights around the world, he said in a statement. Now the real work begins. The true test of the council's credibility will be the use that member states make of it.
Bolton said the United States supported Annan's original proposal for a small permanent council elected by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly to deal with its pre-eminent concern of keeping rights abusers from winning seats.
But the resolution adopted Wednesday calls for election by an absolute majority 96 members. The United States also tried unsuccessfully to get countries subject to U.N. sanctions related to human rights abuses or acts of terrorism barred from membership on the council, he said.
Absent stronger mechanisms for maintaining credible membership ... we did not have sufficient confidence in this text to be able to say that the Human Rights Council would be better than its predecessor, Bolton told the assembly.
That said, the United States will work cooperatively with other member states to make the council as strong and effective as it can be, he said. We will be supportive of efforts to strengthen the council.
U.S. officials said Washington opposes withholding money from the U.N. budget, which will fund the new council, with an initial pricetag of $4.3 million. But Bolton said no decision has been made on whether the United States will seek a seat.
Yvonne Terlingen, U.N. representative for Amnesty International, said it is encouraging to hear that despite voting against the resolution, the U.S. government will cooperate with the council and support it. She urged the U.S. to try to become a member of the council, saying Washington's voice is needed on human rights issues.
Under the resolution, the 53-member commission will be abolished on June 16 and the new 47-member Human Rights Council will hold its first meeting on June 19. Like the commission, the council will be based in Geneva.
The new council will also meet more frequently and periodically review the rights records of all 191 U.N. member states for the first time. The General Assembly can suspend a member for gross human rights violations by a two-thirds majority of those voting and a special session can be called if at least one-third of the council's members approve, a provision aimed at responding quickly to human rights emergencies.