The Top Ten Worst U.N. Moments of 2016
8. The UN Human Rights Council held a minute of silence for brutal dictator and human rights abuser Fidel Castro. UN Watch was the only NGO in the room which refused to stand.
7. Jean Ziegler, co-founder and 2002 laureate of the Moammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, was reelected to the 18-member Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council. Ziegler, an apologist of brutal dictators, was nominated by the Swiss foreign ministry.
6. The UN Human Rights Council, whose experts continue to ignore starvation in Venezuela, allowed the Maduro regime to cheat its recent human rights review by arranging 500 fake NGO submissions praising Caracas, including from the Bolivian Baseball Association, the Cuban Federation of Canine Sports, and the “Association for Obvious Things,” a Slovenian entity that hailed Venezuela’s record on combating hunger.
5. UNESCO negated its mandate to protect world heritage by adopting a resolution which used Islamic-only terms for Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, denying thousands of years of Jewish and Christian heritage, religion and culture.
4. UN human rights official Idriss Jazairy, a former Algerian diplomat, visited Sudan and declared its genocidal government to be a human rights victim — of Western sanctions.
3. UN whistleblower Anders Kompass—punished by his superiors for exposing the rape of children by peacekeepers—resigned in protest over the UN’s grant of “complete impunity” for those who abused their authority, top UN officials’ refusal to express contrition, and the lack of any UN accountability.
2. The UN elected Syria’s genocidal regime to a senior post on a decolonization committee charged with upholding fundamental human rights in opposing the “subjugation, domination and exploitation” of people. The propaganda victory was quickly trumpeted by the Assad regime.
