A Service to Human Rights?

March 17, 2006
The Washington Post
Original Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/16/AR2006031601795.html

WE HOPE the Human Rights Council created Wednesday by the U.N. General Assembly, over the objections of the United States, advances the cause of freedom in the world. For now, count us as skeptical. The previous U.N. human rights commission was in need of a drastic overhaul: Populated by some of the world's most criminal regimes, such as Cuba, Zimbabwe and Sudan, it served in recent years mainly to accelerate the plummeting of U.N. prestige. The new council is only an incremental improvement over the old one. An excessive membership of 53 has been reduced, but only to 47; a too-short annual meeting period of six weeks has been extended, but only to 10.
Most troubling, the barrier to membership on the council has been raised, but not enough. Candidates nominated by regional groupings will now have to win at least 96 General Assembly votes out of a possible 191 to become members. The United States rightly tried to insist that confirmation require a two-thirds vote. It may be that international pariahs such as Zimbabwe and North Korea won't be able to round up enough support under this formula. But don't be surprised to see Cuba reelected -- or China, Egypt, Pakistan and other states that join because of their zeal to prevent close examination of their own behavior. Such nations may constitute a proportionately larger part of the body than before, since Western seats have been reduced to create more for Africa and Asia.
Many human rights groups and governments supported the new council on the grounds that it was better than the old one, or than none at all. Ten weeks or more of official meetings in Geneva certainly serve the bureaucratic interests of the United Nations and the nongovernmental organizations, even if they don't stop any torture or free any political prisoners. The Bush administration and its U.N. ambassador, John R. Bolton, were right to demand a higher standard.
Yet Mr. Bolton's pursuit of that cause combined inattention with divisiveness. The ambassador skipped most of the preparatory meetings for the new council, prompting other nations to conclude that the Bush administration had little interest in it. When he did appear it was to make the unhelpful demand that all permanent members of the Security Council (including Russia and China) automatically receive seats, a position from which the administration quickly retreated. Curiously, when General Assembly President Jan Eliasson presented his final proposal to ambassadors for review, Mr. Bolton did not make clear that the two-thirds vote for membership was important to Washington. He then praised as well thought out a proposal by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) for the United States to withdraw from the council and form a new one outside the United Nations.
Senior State Department officials subsequently made clear that the United States will fund the new body -- and that Mr. Bolton, as so often during the Bush administration, was a protagonist of internal quarrels. In fact, the council's chances will improve if the United States participates and works to mobilize voting alliances to keep the world's dictators from gaining seats. That in turn will require American diplomats who aren't averse to the United Nations' success. Does that describe Mr. Bolton?