Editorial update: America is right to reject U.N. Human Rights Council

March 13, 2007
The Detroit News
Original Source: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070313/UPDATE/703130439/1008/OPINION01


The Bush administration has done the right thing by refusing for a second consecutive year to seek a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. The council is a paper tiger filled with human rights abusers who aren't aggressively investigating human rights violations.
The old Human Rights Commission was supposedly reformed by outgoing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who trimmed it by a few members and renamed it the Human Rights Council. But the tenure has been a disaster.
The greatest human rights tragedy is the genocide and other suffering going on in the Sudan. While people die, the council has engaged in procedural games. When it finally got the nerve to make a weak gesture like sending a commission to the Sudan to investigate, the Sudanese government rejected visas for the investigators. There has been no further action.
Fellow council members Russia, China and Cuba have blocked moves to investigate their human rights abuses, which have been documented by private groups and the State Department for decades.
This has left the collection of Western nations, weak democracies and various dictatorships to focus on Israel -- mainly because Arab countries were angered by the democratic nation's defensive assault last year on Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon.
There is a temptation to seek a seat on the council to try to reform it from within. But the council is beyond repair since it is under the control of human rights abusers. The Bush administration is doing the right thing by staying on the outside and seeking action on human rights in more productive venues.