Human rights council may meet on Congo violations

UN Watch in the News

John Heilprin
Associated Press
November 21, 2008

UNITED NATIONS — The president of the U.N.’s Human Rights Council said Friday members could meet next week to look at the rampant shootings, rape and looting among 1 million civilians uprooted by fighting in eastern Congo.

Worried about the Congolese caught between soldiers and rebels, Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi, who also serves as Nigeria’s ambassador to Switzerland, plans to convene the 47-nation Geneva-based council if at least a third of its members request the session.

Uhomoibhi told The Associated Press there’s “evidence of a strong will in civil society that (council) actions should be taken to address a very serious situation.” Most of the council’s African and European members are discussing the possibility, he said, and more than 50 non-governmental organizations have urged such a session.

Two rights groups, Freedom House and U.N. Watch, wrote to top U.N. officials this week asking that the Human Rights Council urgently spotlight the Congo’s “mass displacement, killings and sexual violence involving hundreds of thousands of victims, if not more.”

They asked that the council reinstate a human rights monitor for Congo who was eliminated earlier this year in a bow to Congo’s government.

Uhomoibhi said more than 1 million have been displaced by the fighting. More than 250,000 refugees have been forced from homes in eastern Congo in recent weeks between the army and fighters loyal to rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.

Nkunda says he is protecting Tutsis from Hutus who fled to Congo after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, but critics say he is making a power grab and accuse his forces of committing multiple human rights abuses. Congo’s army and other militias also are accused of abuses.

The council was created in March 2006 to replace the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, often criticized as easily manipulated by nations with poor human rights records. The U.S. was one of the few nations that voted against creating the council, arguing that it also lacked safeguards against hypocrisy.

The council, whose purpose is to address human rights violations, lacks any binding authority.