The UN’s elite apologists 

Hillel Neuer
February 15, 2007-02-15
The Canadian Jewish News
Original Source: http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=11228
 
Prime Minister Harper has shown, supporting the United Nations does not require apologizing for its abuses. Even the New York Times, an ardent enthusiast of the UN, conceded that last year’s reform of the organization’s new Human Rights Council – which still includes Cuba, China and Saudi Arabia – was an “ugly sham.” Kofi Annan himself exposed the bias of the 47-nation body – whose agenda is entirely dictated by the Islamic bloc – and urged it to change course. 
It is baffling, then, that Jeffrey Laurenti, a Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation and a former adviser to Ted Turner’s UN Foundation, felt it necessary in a recent report not only to absolve the council but also to celebrate its creation – as one of the top 10 “Best in the World for 2006.” Because Laurenti is one of America’s elite commentators on UN affairs, his remarks are also alarming. 
“The biggest institutional overhaul to emerge from outgoing secretary general Kofi Annan’s UN reform drive,” wrote Laurenti, “was the upgrading of the policy body overseeing human rights to a year-round council, four-fifths of whose members are bona fide democracies; the council’s nation-specific focus on war-fighting excesses by Israel and Sudan, however, offended the West and Islamists respectively.” 
This little nugget deserves its own world ranking: despite heavy competition, never have so few words on a UN subject managed to convey so much misinformation. 
First, the council is hardly an “upgrade.” Yes, the new body meets more often than its predecessor, the discredited Commission on Human Rights. But even ardent UN enthusiasts agree that its record has been immeasurably worse. 
The old commission met once a year, managing to censure states that were major abusers of human rights, such as Burma, Cuba, North Korea and Uzbekistan. 
By contrast, the new council has failed to censure a single one of these countries. It has failed even to condemn Sudan for its atrocities in Darfur, despite finally addressing the matter in a December session. Abuses in the rest of the world have been ignored, including every country on Freedom House’s list of the “Worst of the Worst.” 
Is reform impossible? No. Over time, a few modest improvements could emerge. But these will mean little while the governing dynamic – abuser regimes looking out for each other while the democracies waffle – remain the same. So far, it’s been more regression than reform. 
Second, Laurenti engages in malicious distortion when writing about the council’s “nation-specific focus on war-fighting excesses by Israel and Sudan.” 
This is not only a gross misrepresentation of the council’s record but also an odious, if not obscene, comparison of Sudan’s atrocities of mass rape and killings with Israel’s defence against violent attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah. 
As of today, the council, wholly dominated by the Organization of the Islamic Conference and its extremist agenda, has devoted 100 per cent of its condemnations – three special sessions and eight resolutions – to one-sided attacks against Israel. Each granted impunity to Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism. But in a crafty formulation, Laurenti suggests these were legitimate criticisms of Israel’s “war-fighting excesses.” 
As it happens, Annan, the world’s major western democracies and even harsh critics of Israel such as Amnesty International have decried the council’s politically motivated bias. 
As for Sudan, Laurenti is apparently so eager to make his Israel-equals-Sudan analogy that he stoops to gingerly describing Khartoum’s genocide as mere “excesses” in the context of war, not ethnic killing or genocide. 
Third, Laurenti asserts that four-fifths of the council’s members are “bona fide democracies.” Yet according to Freedom House’s annual survey, close to half of the members fail to meet the basic standards of a free democracy. So where does Laurenti get his figures? 
He is obviously referring to the fact that 37 council members have signed on to the “Community of Democracies,” a loose association whose membership requires painfully little, with more than 100 countries waved in. Under Laurenti’s definition, however, it is a badge of honor for the Human Rights Council to include such countries as Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Jordan, Morocco, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia-regimes that jail journalists, trample basic freedoms or commit systematic torture. These are just some of Laurenti’s “bona fide democracies.” 
Reckless words have consequences. Invoking a state’s solemn pledges to the Community of Democracies is rightly used by activists as a sword, to hold governments accountable. But in a dramatic reversal – one that will startle democracy supporters everywhere – Laurenti now advocates using that membership as a shield, to protect subverted UN bodies and, effectively, their repressive members. 
In his defence, Laurenti is guilty only of a copycat crime. The first to purvey this misleading apologia was Morton Halperin, a senior official at George Soros’ Open Society group, in his report issued after the first election of council members in May 2006, and repeated months later in testimony before Congress. Then, in July, the UN Foundation, on its blog that rebuts critiques of the world body, beamed about the council’s “37 democracies.” 
Finally, a senior official of Human Rights Watch celebrated the same misleading figure at a September seminar in New York. Being on the panel, I noted that by the same logic one ought to celebrate the bona fides of all council members, each a signatory to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. There was no rebuttal. Yet not two months later, that individual wrote an op-ed saying that “37 of the council’s 47 members are considered democracies.” 
Does all of this matter? It does. Ordinary citizens are judging the UN by the credibility of its most touted reforms. For various motives – including an ideology that believes the U.S. to be a global menace that must be checked by a powerful UN – leading activists are fudging facts to mask the ugly sores of illegitimacy on the organization’s flagship human rights body. 
However unwittingly, the contorted arguments of Laurenti and his fellow travelers play to the worst forces of extremism that now threaten international peace and security, and contrary to the courageous pleas of Annan, only encourage the council’s further deterioration.