Posted on 02/21/2006 5:23:04 PM PST by Piefloater
THE UN's Human Rights Commission is the canary in the UN coal mine. Not quite dead yet, but spluttering in its death throes, it stands as a warning of all that is wrong with the UN. And if the UN cannot revive its farcical underling, then it has no hope of fixing itself. With the UNHRC due to meet for its last meeting early next month, time is running out.
To understand what went wrong with the UNHRC, you have to start with the mother body. Uniting nations under the idea of the United Nations was always a big ask. Dripping with utopian sentiment and fine-sounding platitudes, the UN was built around the notion of inclusiveness.
No country was too nasty for membership. A country that flouts basic human rights? You're in. A country controlled by a dictator? You're in. A country where the government slaughters its own people? Come on in. Like a club with no dress standards, everyone is welcome through the UN door. And the tally so far? According to Freedom House's 2006 Freedom in the World list less than half of UN members are politically free.
Now, inclusiveness is nice. But it's here where utopians have some explaining to do. When setting the bar for membership so low and expectations so high, something has to give. And in the UN's case, it's been the latter.
According to John Dauth, who has recently returned to Canberra after spending 4 1/2 years as Australia's ambassador to the UN, the global body is achieving nothing. While specialised, satellite bodies such as UNICEF and the World Health Organisation are delivering real outcomes, Dauth says the UN's core body - the General Assembly - is defunct. He says none of the 178 agenda items that came before the General Assembly last year addressed big issues confronting the world. He told The Australian it's not just a case of the UN's main body being unable to define terrorism. They don't even talk about it. Instead, regional blocs of countries, such as the G-77 group, hijack the UN platform to bash the US.
Dauth describes the UN General Assembly as rotten to its core. "If the heart of the body, the core of the apple is rotten, eventually the rest of the apple will be rotten too," he told ABC radio. And the most obvious manifestation of that rot is the feckless UNHRC.
In classic UN mode, sticking out the welcome mat for every Tommy Tyrant means Sudan, Cuba, China and Zimbabwe are all members of the UN's premier human rights body. That beacon of human rights, Libya, held the chair in 2003. Dipping into the Freedom House tally sheet once again, six of the 53 members are among the world's worst of the worst human rights abusers.
Bureaucracies being slow-moving beasts, UN honchos have only recently realised that having Sudan on the UNHRC - a member since 2002 - has done nothing for the people of Darfur.
As if struck by a revelation, the UN secretary-general announced in March last year that some countries were joining the UNHRC to block an examination of their own human rights abuses. And, he added, this "casts a shadow on the reputation of the UN as a whole".
Doh. No doubt looking to leave a legacy after nine years in the top job, Kofi Annan is now talking about a new Human Rights Council. There's talk about having standards for membership, timely intervention in human rights crises, and a year-round existence. Think about those three reforms. They expose why the UNHRC has been such a waste of time. The sticking point is membership. With the riff-raff at UN headquarters in New York keen to keep the riff-raff ensconced at the UNHRC in Geneva, the UN is caught in a sticky web of its own making. In the relativist UN world, the very notion of lifting the bar for membership is anathema.
Even the idea of excluding states under UN sanctions for human rights abuses has the usual suspects crying foul.
A few weeks back, Pakistan's ambassador Munir Akram said: "The presumption that a country is a violator of human rights is very subjective. If you want to create criteria ... that exclude certain countries, why not those that don't support trade liberalisation or that don't implement foreign aid targets? The knife cuts both ways."
True enough in UNtopia where one human right is as good as another. But in the real world, you have to draw the line somewhere. And being stoned to death in Iran or being lashed for talking about Christianity in a Saudi school should be right up there as hurdles for membership on the UN's premier human rights body.
But ever since the UNHRC was established in 1946, human rights have been stretched beyond recognition. Over the past 60 years "human rights" have mutated, via the UN's innumerable committee offspring, into a morass of new-fangled economic, social and cultural rights.
By trying to do too much the UNHRC has ended up doing nothing much at all, except gab-festing for six weeks a year in Geneva. As former US president Jimmy Carter recently pointed out, a 1993 report to the UNHRC into Rwanda's ethnic violence, which predicted the genocide that followed, should have been referred to the UN Security Council. Instead, it went nowhere. Ditto Darfur.
Like the UN, the UNHRC has foundered on the principle of inclusiveness. For all the conferences, summits, back-room talks and long-winded diplomat talk about fixing the UNHRC, the answer is rather simple. Get rid of the riff-raff. Allowing these countries to remain in the human rights club simply gives them a cover of virtue to continue abusing human rights with impunity.
While some suggest agreement on the new council may come in the next few weeks, Dauth is unconvinced. "Well, pigs might fly," he says. Betting on the fact that pigs won't fly any time soon, the UNHRC sits there lifeless without a successor.
And that provides the perfect opportunity for others to try "competitive multilateralism". That's fancy academic speak for injecting competition into the multilateral game - stepping outside the UN to produce real outcomes. Cocooned in their 7ha site on the east side of Manhattan with their very own UN postage stamps, UNtopians will go bonkers at the very idea of competition. But much like a free market, where forces of creative destruction ensure customers get to decide on what suits them best, a dose of competition may be exactly what this behemoth needs to spur it on to reforming not just its human rights body, but more importantly, itself.
The UN a toothless gutter rat.
The problem with the UN is that it no longer puts any pressure on 3rd world hellholes to improve themsevles.
They act like as soon as you walk in the door, no matter how foul and backwards your nation is, your immediatly considered equals with everyone else.
They act like countries like Sudan or Bangledesh are as equal as the USA or England.
All part of the socialist utopia. Its become a toothless debating club. They appease terrorist nations and promoting ganging up on the christian nations by islamic countries.
The UN needs a massive overhaul starting with kicking Koffi Anus out on his anus.
No doubt looking to leave a legacy after nine years in the top job, Kofi Annan is now .....
Doesn't matter what you do now Kofi, you will always be remembered as the guy who killed the UN. Not that that's a bad thing now, though.
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