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U.N. Human Rights
Commission is a joke
Andres
Oppenheimer. Posted
on Sun, Mar. 21, 2004 in The Miami Herald.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission,
which opened its annual session in Geneva,
Switzerland, last week, has become such
a joke -- thanks to members such as Cuba,
China and, yes, the United States -- that
it may be time to dissolve it and put an
independent agency in its place.
Leading international human rights groups
agree that the 53-member U.N. commission
has been virtually taken over by the world's
worst dictatorships, which have formed a
mutual protection club that blocks any serious
investigation into any of their peers.
''The U.N. Commission on Human Rights must
reform itself, or risk irrelevance,'' Amnesty
International said in a statement last week.
Human Rights Watch called on the commission
to "gain some of the credibility it
has lost in recent years.''
The U.N. body's most obvious flaw is that
some of its most active members are representatives
of some of the world's worst human rights
offenders.
While most democratic U.N. member countries
don't care much about sitting on the Human
Rights Commission, dictatorships such as
Cuba, China and Zimbabwe go out of their
way to become members and stop any investigations
into their own abuses. Last year, the commission
was chaired by Libya.
''The foxes are in charge of the chicken
coop,'' says José Miguel Vivanco,
a regional director with Human Rights Watch.
"The world's worst human rights violators
protect themselves, and one another. They
act like a true mafia.''
POLITICS, ECONOMICS
But it's not just a problem of the commission's
membership. Because the commission is made
up of governments -- and not independent
experts -- even pro-human rights countries
such as the United States and European and
Latin American nations often cast votes
based on political or economic considerations
that don't have anything to do with human
rights.
Consider:
o Argentina, which used to vote to condemn
Cuba's human rights abuses, announced last
week that it will abstain this year. The
announcement came only days after international
human rights groups declared that Cuba's
violations reached a new high last year,
with the execution of three people who were
trying to flee the island on a hijacked
boat, and the imprisonment of 75 peaceful
dissidents.
According to Amnesty, Cuba has the largest
number of political prisoners in the hemisphere,
and perhaps the largest in the world on
a per capita basis. Reporters Without Borders
just called Cuba "the biggest prison
for journalists in the world.''
o Neither the United States nor the 15
members of the European Union have so far
supported a resolution condemning China's
human rights abuses, despite a continuation
-- if not a worsening -- of rights violations
there, rights groups say.
While China is moving swiftly toward capitalism,
its human rights record is appalling. Tens
of thousands of people continue to be in
jail for peacefully exercising their right
to freedom of expression, and factories
use large numbers of children who work in
virtual slavery conditions.
o The United States and Britain have joined
dictatorships such as Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia in resisting the idea of creating
a special monitor to look into possible
abuses in the war on terrorism, human rights
groups say. Among the possible subjects
of investigation would be Islamic prisoners
at the U.S. base in Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba.
A CALL FOR 'REFORM'
What should be done? Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch and other major monitoring
groups are calling for a ''reform'' of the
U.N. commission, but I'm afraid that would
be useless.
As long as the U.N. Commission depends
on government votes, even its most democratic
and well-meaning members will protect their
friends and try to punish their foes.
Instead, the United States and other countries
that see themselves as defenders of human
rights should press the United Nations to
abolish the commission, and replace it with
a committee of independent experts selected
for their personal credentials, who could
serve five-year terms with no re-election.
The model already exists: the European
Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France,
and the Organization of American States'
Human Rights Commission in Washington, D.C.,
have gained international credibility precisely
because they are made up of independent
experts who investigate countries' abuses
and report them. It's time for the United
Nations to follow suit.
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