Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia have just won seats on the new U.N. Human Rights Council. The good news: Iran and Venezuela were defeated.
What is the new Human Rights Council? The 47-member committee replaces the Human Rights Commission (both called UNHRC). That highly politicized body was discredited in recent years. Apparently, some countries with terrible rights records were elected to the council and used their membership to protect each other from UN scrutiny.
Thankfully, the UN has said that this new commission will be different:
Yvonne Terlingen, U.N. representative for Amnesty International, said it was “fairly pleased” that the countries elected would provide a good basis for a new “strong and effective human rights body.”
“Some countries have been elected with weak human rights records, but they also are now committed to uphold the highest human rights standards,” she said.
That’s right. If the leaders of these countries now slaughter or starve hundreds of thousands of their own people, they are yet again threatened by the international community’s ultimate weapon — the nasty letter.
Speaking of which, the US opposed the establishment of the council, saying last year that it did not go far enough to prevent rights abusers from winning seats. To which we can only say: too true.
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Such are the difficulties in agreeing a global rule set.
“It is reported”:http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/05/russia-china-uk-canada-among-47-states.php:
_The United States decided not to run for a Human Rights Council seat [JURIST report] in April, giving rise to speculation that in the current context of prisoner abuses by US personnel in the “war against terror” it might not have been able to muster the 96 UN General Assembly votes necessary for a successful membership drive. The UK, France, and Canada were the most prominent Western states winning seats. . ._
The longer the UN is around the more the old John Birch Society–I’m NOT a member–saying becomes more appealing: “Get The US out of the UN and the UN out of the US.”
Germanicus: I’m not sure if you’re from the Northern Virginia/DC area, but if you drive out towards less metropolitan Virginia via 29 South, you will see a HUGE sign that reads “Get the US out of the UN” with the US letters evidently painted in red white and blue.
Also, I think Cuba, Russia, China, and Saudia Arabia should have a cage match for who has a worse human rights record. Because singling out any of these countries as particularly atrocious for a well-timed quip is proving difficult.
I’d pick Venezuela for a seat on a human rights council over any of China, Russia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, or Iran. Venezuela is not currently engaged in torture, neither does it use forced labour, it is not occupying part of a neighbouring state by proxy, it hasn’t threatened to bomb Jerusalem, it’s not currently bombing Grozny. I do not see your point.
Annoying Donald Rumsfeld !=being a enemy of human rights.