NATIONS WITH POOR RIGHTS RECORDS WIN SEATS ON NEW HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates
May 10 2006
UNITED NATIONS – Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia won seats on the
new UN Human Rights Council despite their poor human rights records
but two rights abusers, Iran and Venezuela, were defeated.
Human rights groups said Tuesday they were generally pleased with
the 47 members elected to the council, which will replace the highly
politicized Human Rights Commission. It was discredited in recent
years because some countries with terrible rights records used their
membership to protect one another from condemnation.
“The spoiler governments, the governments that have a history of trying
to undermine the protection of human rights through their membership
on the old commission are now a significantly reduced minority when
it comes to the council,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of
Human Rights Watch. “That doesn’t guarantee that the council will be
a success but it is a step in the right direction.”
Even before the vote, Roth said, “the council was a vast improvement
over the discredited commission” because many countries that violate
human rights who had been commission members didn’t seek seats on
the council including Sudan, Zimbabwe, Libya, Congo, Syria, Vietnam,
Nepal, Sri Lanka, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Yvonne Terlingen, UN representative for Amnesty International, said
it was “fairly pleased” that the council members “constitute a good
basis to make a fresh start with creating a 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.
The United States opposed the establishment of the council, saying it
did not go far enough to prevent rights abusers from winning seats,
and the US decided against being a candidate.
But US Assistant Secretary of State Kristen Silverberg said “on the
whole, we think it is an improvement over the commission.”
“We are committed to engaging actively in the coming weeks with all
of the elected members … to make sure that this body is effective,”
she said. “We think that the real test of this council will be whether
it can take effective action in serious cases of human rights abuse
like Darfur, … Burma, North Korea and other places.”
Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican and critic of the UN,
criticized the vote, saying Cuba’s election showed the new council
suffers from the same weakness as the commission. The new council,
he said, “is the perfect example of the UN’s failure to reform.”
Anne Bayefsky, an adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School
who runs a web site on UN activities, said that at least 20 countries
that were elected “are ranked `partly free’ or `not free’ by Freedom
House,” a Washington-based organization that promotes democracy around
the world.
“That’s an astonishing number of countries that have made it on to
the UN’s primary human rights organ,” she said.
Under the rules for the council, any UN member was eligible to run
and 64 countries submitted their candidacies but Kenya dropped out at
the last minute. Members needed to be elected by an absolute majority
of the 191 UN states – 96 members.
To ensure global representation, Africa and Asia were given 13 seats
each; Latin America and the Caribbean eight seats; Western nations,
seven seats; and Eastern Europe, six seats.
Roth said Human Rights Watch would have preferred that Cuba, China,
Russia, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan had not won seats because of
their poor human rights records.
“The good news is that two of the least deserving governments were
not elected,” he said. “Both Venezuela and Iran failed to make the
cut. That is a step in the right direction.”
Richard Grenell, spokesman for the US Mission to the United Nations,
said Iran’s defeat “just shows their lack of standing in the
international community.”
Russia’s UN Ambassador Sergey Lavrov congratulated his countrymen
and women for being elected in the first round, expressing hope that
Moscow’s presence “will contribute to the balanced composition of this
council and to the balanced … discussion of the human rights agenda.”
Russia was a candidate in the most hotly contested regional group –
Eastern Europe – which fielded 13 candidates for six seats. It was
the only group where a second round of voting was needed.
The other winners were Azerbaijan, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania
and Ukraine. The East European losers were Albania, Armenia, Georgia,
Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia.
With Kenya dropping out, Africa fielded 13 candidates for the 13
seats and all won: Algeria, Cameroon, Djibouti, Gabon, Ghana, Mali,
Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia and Zambia.
The 13 Asians elected to the council were Bangladesh, Bahrain, China,
India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines,
South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka. Those defeated were Iran,
Iraq, Kyrgystan, Lebanon and Thailand.
In Latin American and the Caribbean, the 8 seats went to Argentina,
Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. Nicaragua
and Venezuela were defeated.
The 7 countries elected from the Western bloc were Britain, Canada,
Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland. Greece and
Portugal lost their bid for seats.