New UN rights body same as the old
critics: Abusers hold seats
 
Steven Edwards 
May 10, 2006
The National Post
Original Source: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=c25963e8-81af-4433-8cae-243f95cb2f16&k=26600
 
UNITED NATIONS - China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia were elected to the new Human Rights Council at the United Nations yesterday, a development that bore out the misgivings of John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, who warned that the new Human Rights Council may be no more credible than the body it replaces.
Canada also won a seat on the body Ottawa believes will give the UN a fresh start in human rights monitoring, but the U.S.-based monitoring group Human Rights Watch said the five countries with poor human-rights records should not be sitting in judgment of others.
The UN created the 47-seat council to take the place of its discredited Human Rights Commission, which had become infiltrated by human rights abuser states seeking to blunt international criticism of themselves.
Canada, in contrast to the United States, believes the new body is a big improvement on the old one, and calculated that international support was lacking for the tougher rules governing election to the new body that the United States had sought in an effort to shut out rights abusers.
I am pleased that the international community has recognized and reaffirmed Canada's long-term commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights both at home and abroad, said Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay.
With a seat on the council, Canada will make a valuable contribution to its important work in establishing and enforcing human rights standards, Mr. MacKay said.
The council will begin meeting in Geneva from next month to censure states it finds have violated international human rights norms.
The United States will be absent from the new council, announcing several weeks ago it wants to see how effective the body is before seeking membership.
Human Rights Watch said China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia do not deserve to have been elected. The monitoring group said they won their seats because speaking out in defence of human rights abusers is unfortunately popular among many countries in the wider UN membership. The monitoring group remains supportive of the new body, however.
Obviously, there are a number of governments that we would prefer not to be there, said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch.
But this was almost inevitable ... I think that the important step is that we've made real progress. The spoiler governments -- the governments that had a history of trying to undermine the protection of human rights through their membership of the old commission -- are now a significantly reduced minority.
Mr. Roth said it was good news candidates Iran and Venezuela failed to get elected. But the United States remained skeptical yesterday.
The real performance of the Human Rights Council over the next two- to three-year period is going to be critical, Mr. Bolton said.
Monitoring groups typically critical of the UN said there was little room for optimism as about half the new members are non-democracies, according to the scale produced annually by U.S.-based Freedom House.
That's an astonishing number of countries that have made it onto the UN's primary human rights organ, said Eye on the UN's Anne Bayefsky, a political science professor on leave from Toronto's York University.
That is bound to have an important impact on the credibility of this council.
Revision of the council has been at the heart of more widespread UN reform being promoted by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the wake of scandals and accusations of mismanagement.
We've seen a slight improvement, but at end of day, we still have 50% of the countries that are either not democratic or are outright repressive, said Hillel Neuer, executive director of Geneva-based UN Watch.
This is hardly the reform that Kofi Annan called for last year. Regrettably, the council is looking more and more like the same old discredited commission, but with another name.
Election required 96 votes in the General Assembly, consisting of all 191 UN member governments, and was based on a geographic distribution. Africa and Asia each got 13 seats; Latin America and the Caribbean, eight; North America and Western Europe, seven, and Eastern Europe, six.
The U.S. did not seek a seat after pressing for the panel's creation and then voting in March against the final version of the General Assembly resolution that established membership criteria. Mr. Bolton cited flaws in the text that could allow rights abusers to join the body.
The U.S. sought to elect governments by a two-thirds vote and wanted about 30 members on a human rights panel that would promote democracy and exclude proven abusers of their citizens.
Canada was supported by 130 of 191 member states.