Sudan, whose leader is wanted for genocide in Darfur, is itself a victim of human rights violations, according to an official of the UN Human Rights Council, who blasted U.S. sanctions in a statement summing up his week-long visit to the country, at the invitation of Khartoum.
Idriss Jazairy, whose title is “UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impacts of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights,” was appointed this year to head a Cuban-initiated UNHRC mandate that defines all U.S. sanctions against rogue regimes as violations of human rights.
Jazairy blamed U.S. sanctions on Sudan for damaging the right to life, the right to health, the right to development, the right to potable water, the right to work, the right to education, the right of the elderly, the rights of people with disability, women’s rights, the rights of the child, and the right to food.
Jazairy: Nemesis of UN rights experts, then himself a UN rights expert
Hypocrisy reached new heights in March 2015 when the UNHRC appointed Jazairy as one of its human rights monitors: he is the same man who, as Algerian ambassador, personally headed a major campaign to muzzle the Council’s human rights monitors, by imposing a “Code of Conduct.”
UN Watch sounded the alarm before he was appointed, but to no avail.
As Algerian ambassador on the UNHRC, Jazairy also took many other actions inimical to the protection and promotion of human rights:
- After Sri Lanka killed 40,000 of its own people, Jazairy co-sponsored a 2009 resolution that praised Sri Lanka for “promotion and protection of all human rights”
- Genocide by Sudan in Darfur didn’t stop Jazairy from sponsoring a 2006 resolution that praised the regime’s “cooperation,” while demanding that the international community “honor their pledges of support” and “provide urgent and adequate financial and technical assistance to the Government of Sudan.”
- When UN monitors reported attacks on Darfur civilians by Sudanese government-allied militias, they were immediately challenged by Jazairy: “And I say the alleged links between the government of Sudan, and the militias referred to by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, have yet to be objectively documented.” Click here for video
- Jazairy headed a major effort to amend international treaties so as to prohibit criticism of Islam, under the “Defamation of religion” banner. Jazairy’s non-paper: “Requisite complementary standards shall include the prohibition of publication of material that direct seriously offensive attacks on matters regarded by followers of any religion or belief as sacred or inherent to their dignity as human beings.”
- Jazairy repeatedly sought to distort the meaning of the word anti-Semitism, saying that it targets Arabs and Muslims.
