A skewed vision of human rights

July 06, 2004
National Post
http://canadiancoalition.org/nationalpost54/arbour.html
Louise Arbour, until recently a Canadian Supreme Court justice, last week took up her new position as United Nations high commissioner for human rights (UNHCHR). This might be a source of national pride, were it not for the dubious statements Ms. Arbour has made in the past month. She has charged that human rights around the world are under siege -- not by militant Islamists, who never hesitate to kill in their war against infidels, but rather by the United States and the war on terror it is leading.
It's a preposterous view, but one that is unfortunately shared by most of the legal and diplomatic elites who staff the world's human rights NGOs. So far, Ms. Arbour has given every indication she intends to follow in the footsteps of former UNHCR Mary Robinson, who was renowned for her criticism of both the United States and Israel.
When asked last month what she saw as her main challenge at the United Nations, Ms. Arbour singled out the rights she believes are being threatened from Guantanamo Bay to Baghdad, a not-so-veiled reference to U.S. efforts against al-Qaeda and Saddamite loyalists. Then, this past Sunday, Ms. Arbour claimed she saw a parallel between the current war on terrorism and the Canadian military's takeover of Montreal during the FLQ hostage crisis of 1970, when the War Measures Act was invoked and habeas corpus was suspended: There is the same kind of willingness to delegate, to surrender any of your cherished freedoms because of the hysteria that was surrounding the events as they were unfolding.
To imply that the war on terror is merely a hysterical overreaction to the attacks of 9/11 betrays Ms. Arbour's lopsided and politically correct view of human rights. In her statements, Ms. Arbour is usually quick to add that terrorism is a violation of fundamental human rights, too -- usually. But she so often dwells on how the United States is or isn't living up to the UN's standards of behaviour that it is clear who she considers the greater threat to human rights -- and it's not the terrorists.
Ms. Arbour is not alone at the summit of the international rights industry. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, a New York-based rights advocacy, welcomed Ms. Arbour's swearing-in and urged her to confront the Bush administration immediately, insisting that this is a time when the United States is jeopardizing the viability of some of the most fundamental human rights principles. Paul Heinbecker, Canada's former ambassador to the UN, also charged that the UNHCHR must deal with American exceptionalism -- the notion that the United States has suspended its obligations (to rights and the rule of law) because of a war.
Not surprisingly, Mrs. Robinson has also entered the fray, accusing the United States and other countries of broaden[ing] the reach of the law and eroding the previous protections.
Of course, this is the same Mary Robinson who presided over the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa -- a gathering that deteriorated when Jewish delegates were physically threatened and jeered while Arab delegations and some NGOs freely distributed anti-Semitic literature. Israel was frequently likened to Nazi Germany for its occupation of the disputed territories in Gaza and the West Bank.
Yet after it was over, Mrs. Robinson insisted of the conference: We ... succeeded! ... Durban was an honest, if at times painful, global dialogue, [but it] launched a renewed global alliance against racism and gave it a solid anti-discrimination agenda to work with. 
Louise Arbour seems an intellectual heir to Mrs. Robinson, which we sincerely hoped would not happen. Expect under her tenure as high commissioner the same obsession with bashing the United States and Israel and the same blindness to real human rights abuses in some of the world's least free nations.
The UN's sense of right and wrong has been topsy-turvy for a while now, and right-minded people ought to be disgusted with it. There is little indication things will be set right any time soon. When does this farce end?
© National Post 2004