Wanted at the U.N.: Champion of Basic Freedom

By  Benny Avni
March 10, 2008
The New York Sun
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/72632?page_no=1




A memo to the next http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=United+Nations \o United Nations U.N. high commissioner of human rights: You are about to take a position in a complex organization that aspires to cure all of the world's ills, real or imagined — and yet has no serious champion of basic freedoms. That could be your mission, if you choose to accept it.
The current commissioner, http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Louise+Arbour \o Louise Arbour Louise Arbour of http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Canada \o Canada Canada, will leave her post in June after deciding last week to forgo a second term. She followed the party line in human rights circles, publicly attacking the countries where such freedoms are intact and stepping delicately around regimes that trample them.
Basic human rights are simple and easily understood, the first chairwoman of the U.N. human rights body, http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Eleanor+Roosevelt \o Eleanor Roosevelt Eleanor Roosevelt, told the U.N. General Assembly in http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Paris \o Paris Paris in 1948. Freedom of speech and a free press; freedom of religion and worship; freedom of assembly and the right of petition; the right of men to be secure in their homes and free from unreasonable search and seizure and from arbitrary arrest and punishment.
Today's U.N. human rights bureaucracy instead addresses less easily understood issues, such as the effects of economic reform policies and foreign debt on the full enjoyment of human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights. No wonder a so-called independent rapporteur on a right to housing, Miloon Kothari, accused the Bush administration last week of deliberately forcing black New Orleanians into homelessness in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Ms. Arbour's most forceful line as commissioner was directed at http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=United+States \o United States America's war on terror, which she said has inflicted a very serious setback to the cause of human rights. She acknowledged employing diplomatic tact in addressing rights violations by tyrants.
Even taken at a face value, such accusations against Washington are far from courageous. They are merely a repetition of ideas already promoted by American politicians, in American newspapers, and in churches, synagogues, and mosques. They also are often examined in America's independent courts.
No Burmese opposition party, however, is allowed to champion the rights of monks who disappear from the streets of Rangoon. Granma reporters shy away from covering the stints of Castro critics at insane asylums. What is happening inside Tibet, where following the teachings of the Dalai Lama is forbidden? No independent review is possible. Moscow reporters who try to examine Russia's war in http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Chechnya \o Chechnya Chechnya are found dead. On the other hand, television images from http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Gaza+Strip \o Gaza Strip Gaza, like the now famous candlelight vigil against the power cuts, are widely available. And so eight British-based human rights organizations last week concluded that Gaza's human rights situation is the worst it has been since 1967, and the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council issued yet another statement deploring its only international target: Israel, whose form of government closely adheres to Roosevelt's basic freedoms.
As far as the rulers of Gaza are concerned, the only right the locals have is to fight the Israelis. In his role as coordinator for humanitarian organizations, Colonel Nir Press of the Israeli army often confers with Gaza farmers. Last year he reminded them that during Shmita — the seventh year of the Jewish calendar, when the faithful are barred from working the land — Orthodox Jews prefer to buy produce farmed by Muslims. I said to them, 'You can choose to export vegetables or choose war. You can't have both,' Colonel Press told me last week. In Gaza, however, vegetable growers can only dream of forming a union to petition http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Hamas \o Hamas Hamas to stop launching rockets long enough to take advantage of this, a profitable Shmita year. Hamas fighters deal with such pleas by shooting the plaintiff in the back of the leg, to ensure the kneecap pops off and the lower half of the leg is lost. Facing such methods, what Gaza-based cameraman would dare to alert his employers to the fact that some of that candlelight footage was shot indoors, with the curtains drawn, to shut out the noontime sunlight?
Secretary-General Ban is notoriously slow in making appointments, but when he thinks about Ms. Arbour's successor, he would be wise to look beyond the candidates' regional origin (it now seems to be Africa's turn). Instead, he should wonder, can this new commissioner reverse a trend that started early in U.N. history, when diplomats did away with inalienable freedoms as enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
Like all compromisers, those early diplomats looked to bridge Roosevelt's simple rights with the political needs of Stalin, who had nothing but contempt for them. Once rights ceased to be universal, they became just another political tool, as they are in today's U.N. system, where violators dictate the rules and the commissioner applauds.
bavni@nysun.com