UN General Assembly
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Watchdogs criticizes UN Rights Council
Two monitoring groups say Rights Council has several members that are consistent rights violators
The UN Human Rights Council has failed to criticize egregious human rights violations since it replaced a discredited UN rights body last year, two watchdog groups said Monday.
The two groups, UN Watch and Freedom House, released reports charging that rights violators such as Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China have shielded themselves — and countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe — from criticism as members of the new group.
The groups said the UN General Assembly is also expected to select several other countries with poor rights records to become new members of the body this month. The groups named Angola, Belarus, Egypt and Qatar as candidate nations that were unqualified for membership because of their poor rights records.
UN Watch, based in Geneva, described the council's first year as "profoundly disappointing."
UN Criticism
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"Members are supposed to be elected based on their human rights records, yet the council includes persistent violators, and after the upcoming elections is expected to include several more," the UN Watch report said. "The council's record so far is profoundly disappointing."
UN Watch, which monitors the U.N.'s compliance with its charter, is associated with the American Jewish Committee. Freedom House is a New-York based democracy watchdog.
The Human Rights Council, which began its work last June and has no power beyond drawing international attention to rights issues, was meant to replace the highly politicized Human Rights Commission with a new body that could keep some of the worst offenders out of its membership.
Instead, critics say, it has been dominated by African and Muslim countries that have sided with China, Cuba and other countries in preventing criticism of any government but Israel. The United States has also not sought a seat on the council, accusing it of anti-Israel bias.
According to UN Watch, the council has issued 12 country-specific resolutions: nine censures of Israel and three "non-condemnatory" resolutions on Sudan.
The most recent resolution on Sudan, passed in late March, expressed concern over the situation in Darfur but avoided any outright criticism of the Sudanese government.
Amnesty International said the resolution had the potential to be a "major turning point" in the council's approach to Darfur because Sudan's allies supported it. However, the group failed to denounce the role of the Sudanese government and the janjaweed in grave violations of human rights.
