Your U.N. at Work III

August 31, 2007
Wall Street Journal
Original Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118850879909613882.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118850879909613882.html
The same people who brought us the 2001 Durban antiracism conference, which degenerated into an anti-Semitic hate fest, are working hard to ensure that the follow-up meeting will be more of the same. We are talking about the United Nations, of course, under whose auspices six years ago the professed fight against racism was turned on its head. As if to top that sorry record, on Monday the U.N.'s Human Rights Council put Libya in charge of organizing the next such antiracism conference.
Moammar Gadhafi's regime, more famous for brutalizing black African migrants than fighting xenophobia, will thus be allowed to shape the agenda of the 2009 gathering. Libya's only credential would seem to be that it ranks high on the list of human-rights offenders, and has some very recent experience. Until only last month, five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor had been incarcerated in Libya for eight years on false charges of infecting children with HIV. Their only crime was being foreigners, which in Libya made them easy scapegoats for the hospitals' incompetence.
In its new role as antiracism fighter, Tripoli will be assisted by Holocaust-denying Iran. Tehran's appointment as one of 20 panelists is particularly noteworthy, since the U.N.'s own general assembly formally condemned Iran last December for its oppression and racism. The U.N. body deplored Iran's increasing discrimination and other human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities, including Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds, Christians, Jews, Sunni Muslims and members of the Bahai faith.
At the U.N., it seems, moments of clear moral judgment are short-lived. With the likes of Libya and Iran in charge of human rights, such moments are sure to become even more rare.