June 15: Hypocrisy at the UN Human Rights Council

As the UN Human Rights Council celebrates its 10th anniversary with endless self-congratulatory speeches, UN Watch will be reporting daily on the debates of the June 2016 session. Click here for UN Watch’s assessment of the council’s performance over the past decade.

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Saudi Arabia protested “tools to interfere with our internal affairs, under the pretense of protecting human rights.” Responding to a proposal to decriminalize certain drugs, the Saudi delegate objected to “anything that comes in contradiction with Islam.”
Sudan organized a side event on “Women’s empowerment in the Sudan,” yet the subject was quickly diverted to attacks on the West for having the audacity to sanction the genocidal regime.
Sudan’s delegate said “unilateral sanctions by the U.S. affect directly the rights of women in development and education.”
He then referred to the visit to Sudan by former Algerian ambassador Idriss Jazairy, the council’s “Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures,” an anti-Western mandate by which the council seeks to cast all sanctions on oppressive regimes as human rights violations in themselves. UN Watch exposed the absurdity of this sham UN visit here.
“The special rapporteur visited Sudan and saw all these sectors which were affected,” said the Sudanese delegate. “We call on the international community to lift these sanctions, because they affect human rights and especially the rights of women.”
Eritrea took the floor to back Khartoum, saying, “we know what sanctions mean, we say in the Sustainable Development Goals that no one should be left behind, so we need to make sure that certain countries would not be burdened by these measures.”
Qatar likewise expressed its “support to the Sudanese Government for protecting human rights.”


Additional resources:
Hillel Neuer testifies at United States Congress
Previous blog posts from the Human Rights Council

UN Watch