“All too often, and most times without any real justification, the Human Rights Council has been criticized in the manner and outcome of its work. Let me appeal for greater circumspection, objectivity and patience in assessing the work of the Council,” reported its president, Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi of Nigeria, to the UN General Assembly yesterday.
“Two years is hardly enough time to be overly critical of an institution which we strongly believe holds great promise as a universal human rights body.”
We beg to differ. In its two years of existence, the Arab-controlled council has systematically undermined the cause of human rights and eviscerated the UN’s few existing tools that work. Human rights monitors in Belarus, Cuba, Liberia, Congo (DRC), have all been scrapped. Genocide by Sudan has been ignored, with the monitor of that country’s atrocities now on the chopping block as well. Watch the March 2009 session, when the Sudan mandate is set to expire.
Violations by 189 other countries have been equally ignored, while Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism was encouraged. A full 80% of all country censures were directed at one nation, Israel. The list goes on and on.
Never in the history of international human rights has one of its own institutions inflicted so much damage.
On what basis will time be a healer? On the contary, with each session, another remaining country monitor gets eliminated, more Islamic resolutions are adopted to curtail free speech in the name of “defamation of religion”, and human rights as a whole suffers.
