A Table for Tyrants
The New York Times
May 11, 2009
By VACLAV HAVEL, Op-Ed Contributor
PRAGUE — Imagine an election where the results are largely preordained
and a number of candidates are widely recognized as unqualified. Any
supposedly democratic ballot conducted in this way would be considered a
farce. Yet tomorrow the United Nations General Assembly will engage in
just such an `election’ when it votes to fill the vacancies on the
47-member Human Rights Council.
Only 20 countries are running for 18 open seats. The seats are divided
among the world’s five geographic regions and three of the five regions
have presented the same number of candidates as there are seats, thus
ensuring there is no opportunity to choose the best proponents of human
rights each region has to offer.
Governments seem to have forgotten the commitment made only three short
years ago to create an organization able to protect victims and confront
human rights abuses wherever they occur.
An essential precondition was better membership. The council’s
precursor, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, was folded in
2006 mainly because it had, for too long, allowed gross violators of
human rights like Sudan and Zimbabwe to block action on their own abuses.
The council was supposed to be different. For the first time, countries
agreed to take human rights records into account when voting for the
council’s members, and those member-states that failed to, in the words
of the founding resolution, `uphold the highest standards in the
promotion and protection of human rights’ would find themselves up for
review and their seats endangered. For victims of human rights abuses
and advocates for human rights worldwide, the reforms offered the hope
of a credible and effective body.
Now, it seems, principle has given way to expediency. Governments have
resumed trading votes for membership in various other United Nations
bodies, putting political considerations ahead of human rights. The
absence of competition suggests that states that care about human rights
simply don’t care enough. Latin America, a region of flourishing
democracies, has allowed Cuba to bid to renew its membership. Asian
countries have unconditionally endorsed the five candidates running for
their region’s five seats – among them, China and Saudi Arabia.
In past years, Western countries encouraged rights-respecting states
from other regions to compete for election. This year, they have ceded
the high ground by presenting a non-competitive slate for the council
elections. New Zealand withdrew when the United States declared its
candidacy, leaving just three countries – Belgium, Norway and the United
States – running for three seats.
Even where competition is guaranteed, it is minimal. In the Eastern
Europe region – which under the United Nations’ rules includes all
countries behind the former Iron Curtain, including my own, the Czech
Republic – the countries running for re-election are Azerbaijan and
Russia, whose human rights records oscillate from questionable to
despicable. Only Hungary has stepped forward to compete for the region’s
two seats. The reluctance of Eastern European states to reclaim
leadership from human rights abusers does not inspire confidence.
Like the citizens of Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia, I
know what it is like to live in a country where the state controls
public discourse, suppresses opposition and severely curtails freedom of
expression. It is thus doubly dismaying for me to see the willingness of
democracies in Latin America and Asia to sit by and watch the council
further lose its credibility and respect.
Activists and journalists in Azerbaijan and Cuba have already appealed
to the international community not to elect their nations to the Human
Rights Council. States committed to human rights and the integrity of
the council cannot remain indifferent. Countries must express solidarity
with the victims of human rights abuses and reclaim the council by
simply refusing to vote for human rights abusers in this shamefully
uncontested election.
Vaclav Havel was the president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.
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