Human Rights Hoax

June 21, 2007
The Wall Street Journal
Original Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118238460312342761.html

The U.N.'s new Human Rights Council marked its first birthday Tuesday in Geneva by voting to withdraw monitors from Cuba and Belarus, while enacting rules that will make it more difficult to launch investigations of rights violations in other countries. We knew this outfit would be embarrassing, but it keeps surpassing expectations.
The council was sold as an improvement on its predecessor, but with 47 members, almost half of which are ranked either unfree or partly free by Freedom House, and a mandate to reach consensus, that was always unlikely. In trying to placate China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Russia this week, council president Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico drafted a set of rules that mock the institution's very mission.
The new rules promise to review U.N. monitoring of the nine countries still on the human-rights watch list -- Burundi, North Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Liberia, Cambodia, Burma, Somalia and Sudan. At the request of China, the council will now insist on the broadest possible support for initiating any investigation, preferably a minimum of 15 supporting nations. Thematic probes on subjects like food will undoubtedly continue while those aimed at defending freedom of speech and political rights will come under attack. The one investigation that remains certain and permanent is the monitoring of Israeli violations in the Palestinian territories.
The real scandal here is the West's abandonment of moral leadership. Under the consensus mandate, even a handful of the 47 members could have blocked this anti-democratic document. Yet only Canada objected to the indictment of Israel, and Mr. de Alba refused to acknowledge the Canadian concerns.