Soon, on January 12, 2010, we will mark the one-year anniversary of the UNHRC special session and resolution that commissioned the Goldstone Report. It’s a time to remember who orchestrated the “fact-finding” exercise.
The 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which effectively controls the UNHRC, is being far more honest about this than Goldstone. Here’s what OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu revealed to Al Jazeera in October:
Let me first start by completing the story of the history of the Goldstone report. What I would like to put on record is that the OIC was the initiator of this process.
On January 3, during the attacks on Gaza, we convened the executive committee of the OIC on a ministerial level. It was decided that the OIC group in Geneva should ask the Human Rights Council to convene and consider the possibility of sending a fact-finding mission to Gaza.
The OIC was instrumental in getting through this resolution and thanks to the good offices of Ms Pilay, the UN high commissioner, that she formed this fact-finding mission headed by Judge Goldstone.
On October 8, I visited Geneva and had a meeting with OIC ambassadors and the high commissioner. We revived the process again and the Goldstone report has been approved by the rights council.
