Laugh or cry?

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.