Nuthin' from nuthin' means nuthin'

Feb. 28 - You got to have somethin' if you want support from us! La la la!

(If this musical outburst appears unseemly it's on account of all is right with the world because Jimmy Carter and I are on opposite sides again. Thank goodness. Those brief days of agreement were scary.)

Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, UNHR Commissioner Louise Arbour*, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch support a severely compromised U.N. proposal to create a new human rights council within the U.N. and John Bolton doesn't (U.S. Opposes U.N.'s Planned Rights Panel.)

John Bolton is holding out for a proposal tough enough to exclude nations that abuse human rights from the panel. His line of reasoning seems reasonable: the inclusion of so many countries that did not practice human rights discredited the current U.N. Commission on Human Rights to the point of rendering it absurd, so why repeat the fiasco?

Support for the proposal seems to stem from fatigue and resignation:

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and other supporters of the compromise warned that there is no better deal to be struck and that the U.S. strategy could undermine their efforts to create an improved, though imperfect, human rights body. "I think we should not let the better be the enemy of the good," Annan told reporters Monday in Geneva.

That Kofi can obfuscate with the best of them. His homily, in that that the compromise cuts the legs off the proposed panel, suggests that unnecessary (and unethical) amputation is the "good," and that choosing a whole and healthy body is the "better."

The United States and the United Nations have been pressing for nearly a year to create a strengthened human rights council to replace the 53-member Human Rights Commission. The reputation of the Geneva-based panel, which helped draft the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has recently been tainted by the frequent election of members with dismal human rights records, such as Sudan and Zimbabwe.

and Egypt. and China. and Cuba. Aw heck. Membership list from 2001-2005 and membership from 1947-2003 broken down regionally is here.

Senior U.S. and U.N. officials had sought to prevent countries with poor rights records from joining the new organization by raising the membership standards and requiring a two-thirds vote of the 191-member General Assembly for any nation's admittance. But the proposal met stiff resistance, and the current draft resolution would require members to be elected by an absolute majority -- at least 96 countries.

The new panel has the same problem as the current commission: it will be too easy for countries with poor human rights records to be on it. And this is the huge fraking clue:

Annan, who discussed the human rights council Sunday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, appealed Monday for the United States to "join the vast majority of governments who seem ready to accept" Eliasson's proposal. He and other supporters said the proposal constituted a serious improvement on the existing Human Rights Commission.

(Let's just skip over the peer pressure. Most of those countries are not our peers anyway.) The majority of governments represented at the U.N. are totalitarian governments -- and they support this compromise because

a) they've seen the light and meekly realize they must respect human rights;

b) they're suicidal;

c) they know it's just a coat of cheap paint over mouldy walls.

They noted that provisions to subject all council members to scrutiny of their human rights record would discourage countries with poor records from joining. They also said that council members suspected of abusive behavior can be suspended by a vote of two-thirds of the U.N. membership present.

Two of the supporters, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, already subject every country to scrutiny and publicize their findings. And to what effect? Nary a blush, much less reform. Get real.

The new council would consist of 47 members selected by secret ballot on the basis of "geographical distribution" and committed to "uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights."

The only democratic country in the Mid-East is Israel. Second-runner up is Iraq. Any bets on how many votes either of those countries will receive?

*Louise Arbour is a Canadian.

Posted by: Debbye at 08:00 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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