GENEVA, August 25, 2014 –  The Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch, which spearheaded this month’s campaign by rights activists, MPs and Iraqi minority leaders for an emergency UN Human Rights Council session on Iraq, welcomed the news that a meeting will likely be held next Monday, but demanded an outcome with “concrete actions to help the desperate people on the ground.”
The announcement came today at a meeting of the 47-nation body in Geneva, one week after UN Watch launched its global appeal with a rally, press conference and diplomatic marathon featuring Iraqi Christian and Yazidi leaders.
“An urgent session on the Islamic State’s butchering of Iraq’s Christians, Yazidis and other minorities is long overdue, but it’s better late than never,” said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.
“Our international coalition wants to see three concrete outcomes from the UN meeting: a resolution that strongly condemns the atrocities committed by ISIS; the establishment of a commission of inquiry to document those atrocities; and a revival of the UNHRC’s mandate of a Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iraq, which was wrongly canceled 10 years ago, to ensure that we have an early warning system in place over both the near and long term,” said Neuer.
“With so many lives at stake — men being slaughtered like animals, and women being terribly abused — the UN human rights council must act immediately. We must have deeds, not only words,” said Neuer.
“To date, the silence has been deafening. How can it be that for an entire summer Islamic State terrorists have been beheading children, crucifying Christians, raping and enslaving women and girls, and forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes, only to face starvation and dehydration on remote mountain-tops, and yet the world’s top human rights body is out on vacation?”
During the emergency session next week, UN Watch plans to bring a young Iraqi Christian to testify before the council of the horrors suffered by her community.
 

_____________

Related:

• Urgent Appeal to UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay to Stop Genocide in Iraq 
  Signed by an international coalition of Members of Parliament and Human Rights Activists

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Today, as controversial UN official Richard Falk ended his 6-year term as human rights investigator, the UN appointed his wife and academic partner, Hilal Elver Falk, to her own 6-year term as a human rights investigator. The couple co-direct a research institute.

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 Hilal Elver, co-director with her husband Richard Falk of a
research institute  at UCSB, is slated to win a top UN post on Thursday.

GENEVA, May 6, 2014 — U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power must speak out now to stop a controversial Turkish lawyer — the wife and employee of discredited UN official Richard Falk — from winning a top U.N. human rights post this Thursday, said UN Watch in a letter that was also sent to ambassadors from Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Romania and the UK, all of whom are voting members on the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and to Canada, an observer.
The Geneva-based advocacy group expressed serious concerns about the nomination of Hilal Elver, a former Turkish government adviser, for the position of UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, to be decided in Geneva on Thursday.
The UN position was initiated in 2000 by Cuba, and held for eight years by Jean Ziegler, founder and recipient of the Muammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize.
“I don’t know why the U.S. is refusing to speak out. The appointment of Falk’s wife for a 6-year term on the same day that his own term ends is crass nepotism,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer, “in flagrant breach of council rules. And she is completely unfit to serve.”
In her application form, Elver gave self-disqualifying answers, stating that she was in violation of the council’s conflict-of-interest prohibition. Her responses are replete with spelling mistakes and non-sequiturs.
Elver is the co-author of many articles with Falk — who was condemned last year by UN chief Ban Ki-moon — and has joined her husband on numerous occasions in supporting the work of 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and in accusing the West and Israel of Islamophobia and “genocide.”
“Hilal Elver is not only Richard Falk’s wife, employee and main collaborator, but she echoes his crude and simplistic post-colonial narrative, which demonizes America, the West, and Israel, while praising dictators like Erdogan and the books of 9/11 conspiracy theorists,” said Neuer.
In its letter to Power, UN Watch summarized her failure to satisfy the job’s minimum requirements, as Neuer did in an article here.
According to UN Watch, thousands have signed an online campaign appealing for the U.S. government to take action.

————————————

Letter sent to the U.S., Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Romania and the UK.

Dear Ambassador Power,
UN Watch is deeply concerned over the proposed UN Human Rights Council appointment, scheduled for this Thursday, 8 May 2014, of Ms. Hilal Elver as the new Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. For the reasons set forth below, UN Watch urges the United States to oppose her candidacy, which we believe will harm the cause of human rights, damage the reputation of the United Nations, and undermine the interests of the United States.
As you know, the Right to Food mandate was conceived by Cuba in 2000 to be used as a political weapon against the U.S. and West, which is exactly what the first mandate-holder— Jean Ziegler, co-founder of the Muammar Gaddafi Human Rights Prize—did for eight years. A review of Ms. Elver’s record suggests that she would follow this politicized and prejudiced path.
Under Article 39 of the Annex to Human Rights Council Resolution 5/1, the criteria for mandate-holders include: (a) expertise; (b) experience in the field of the mandate; (c) independence; (d) impartiality; (e) personal integrity; and (f) objectivity.
Ms. Elver clearly fails to meet these criteria. We note the following:

• Elver Fails Impartiality Test: Ms. Elver fails the objectivity and impartiality test. She devotes much of her writing to condemning America and the West. A former adviser to the Office of the Turkish Prime Minister, she has praised Erdogan as “imaginative” and “brave”; celebrated his “religious devotion” and “generosity to others less fortunate”; and saluted him for taking “the high road of moderation and humility.” By contrast, she justified Turkey declining the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice by citing “the influence of the strong Greek lobby in international forums.” (Elver, “Reluctant Partners: Turkey and the European Union,” Middle East Report, Vol. 235, Summer 2005.)

• Elver’s Academic Work Cites 9/11 Truthers’ Bible: Together with her husband and co-author Richard Falk, Elver is explicitly acknowledged in the world’s leading 9/11 conspiracy book, “The New Pearl Harbor,” for the help she provided the author, David Ray Griffin. Elver’s own academic work cites to Griffin’s conspiracy book, which argues that the Bush Administration helped orchestrate the attacks on the World Trade Center to justify wars against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a 2012 law journal article, Elver explicitly cited to Griffin’s notorious conspiracy tract. She compared 9/11 to Pearl Harbor, saying that both incidents “gave permission to the government to unleash the war power,” “invade countries”, “create new hegemonies”, and “racially discriminate against and segregate the people inside the United States.” (See H. Elver, “Racializing Islam Before and After 9/11,” Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, Vol. 21 at 119, Spring 2012.)

• Elver Accuses U.S. of “Hostility Toward Islam”: According to Ms. Elver, the “American establishment”—she singles out the media and Hollywood—is guilty of “hostility towards Islam.” (Ibid.)

• Appointment of Richard Falk’s Co-Author Sends Wrong Message: Ms. Elver is not only the wife of discredited UN official Richard Falk, she is also his co-author on many articles and books. They travel, work, write, lecture and attend conferences together. She is not only his “constant companion,” says Falk, but also his “deepest collaborator.” Appointing Elver will in some ways be like appointing Falk, and will send a terrible message: the day that Falk finally leaves the UN, he will walk back in through another door. Symbolism matters.

• Elver’s Work is Sloppy and Tendentious: Elver’s work is infused with dogmatism and tendentiousness, and with sloppy attention to facts. In June 2011, for example, after the Economist advised Turkish voters to vote against the party of Recip Tayyip Erdogan, Elver and Falk published an article on the Al Jazeera website accusing the British magazine of a “Eurocentric virus,” because it “never did venture such an opinion on the eve of the election of such reactionary and militarist figures as George W. Bush, Stephen Harper, or Binyamin Netanyahu.” The magazine, they wrote, revealed “a mentality that has not shaken itself free from the paternalism and entitlements of the bygone colonialist days.” In fact, however, the Economist indeed had advised American, Canadian and Israeli citizens how to cast their votes. “Don’t professors do any homework nowadays?” asked the magazine in response.

• Elver’s Election is Illegal for Stated Conflict of Interest: In her application form, asked if she satisfied the position’s mandatory conflict-of-interest rules, she stated “No.” Elver is the only one of ten applicants who declared non-compliance with Questions 4-5 under Section VII of the application. No correction of her form has been reported. If her self-disqualifying answers to these two questions were erroneous, this would only underscore the unprofessionalism of her application, which is replete with spelling mistakes and non-sequiturs.

• Like Falk, Elver Accuses Israel of “Water Apartheid” and “Genocide”: As UN food expert, we can guess what her first charge will be. At a December conference in Qatar, she gave a lecture on Israel entitled “Water Apartheid.” There is every indication that Elver would, like Ziegler, twist the hunger post to go after Israel. In 2007, Elver accused the Jewish state of “genocide” and compared Israelis to “Nazis.”

• Elver Says “Jewish Lobby Manipulates American Politics”: Like Erdogan, Elver is obsessed with what she calls in her Turkish articles “Yahudi lobisini” (“the Jewish lobby”). On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Elver wrote that “the Jewish lobby” is “manipulating American politics” to ensure unlimited support for Israel. In 2012, she warned about “the strong Zionist lobby” in the United States. Indeed, “many Muslim organizations are being controlled” in the American political arena by “pro-Israel lobbyist groups.” (See links to all sources in UN Watch Briefing No. 440, at unwatch.org)

For all of these reasons, UN Watch urges the United States, as a leading member of the Human Rights Council, to uphold that body’s rules and founding principles by opposing the unfit candidacy of Ms. Elver.
Sincerely,
Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director

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Delivered by Min-Soo Roh

Thank you, Mr. President.
UN Watch commends the Commission of Inquiry for their important report today on the gross and systematic human rights violations in the DPRK, and we welcome its conclusions and recommendations.
The report describes unspeakable atrocities. In the political prison camps of the DPRK, the inmate population has been gradually eliminated through deliberate starvation, forced labour, executions, torture, rape, forced abortion and the killing of children. Hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have perished in these camps over the past five decades.
Mr. President, we urge the United Nations to take urgent action, by adopting the measures recommended by the report.
In addition, one important and ongoing response from this Council ought to be increased and expanded investigation from the thematic special procedures.
For example, the report speaks in depth about widespread and grave violations of the right to food in the DPRK. The State and its leadership caused the death of at least hundreds of thousands of people and inflicted permanent physical and psychological injuries on those who survived.
In the highly centralized system of the DPRK, decisions relating to food, including its production and distribution, and the use of international food aid, are ultimately made by a small group of officials, who are not accountable to those affected by their decisions. The commission warns of the recurrence of mass starvation.
Accordingly, the rapporteur on the right to food ought to regularly report on the DPRK, as should all of the other relevant rapporteurs.
It should not be the case that rapporteurs refrain from reporting on countries that do not invite them. That only leads to the paradoxical result that the world is given the least amount of information about countries with the most to hide. Just as the commission did, rapporteurs can gather credible evidence by many ways other than visiting the country concerned.
Thank you, Mr. President.

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As much of the world starves, a UN hunger expert investigates Canada

The National Post (Canada)
May 5, 2012, p. A20
EDITORIALS

By Hillel Neuer

Olivier De Schutter is the UN Human Rights Council’s “Special Rapporteur on the right to food,” a post initiated by Cuba. Tomorrow he begins an 11-day investigation of Canada. De Schutter’s senior adviser, Priscilla Claeys, previously worked with Oxfam Canada, part of the group that is unofficially coordinating his visit, and with Rights and Democracy—a Canadian agency soon to be shut down—where she collaborated with the UN office of Jean Ziegler, co-founder of the “Muammar Qaddafi Human RIghts Prize” and De Schutter’s predecessor.

“There is no food and no clean water, nothing,” Mahmoud, a 12-year-old boy from Homs, Syria, told Reuters Thursday. “There is no shop open and we only have one meal a day. How can we live like that and survive?”

According to the World Food Program, half a million people don’t have enough to eat in Syria. Fears are growing that the regime is using hunger as a weapon.

This is the kind of emergency which should attract the attention of the UN Human Rights Council’s hunger monitor, who has the ability to spotlight situations and place them on the world agenda. Yet Olivier de Schutter of Belgium, the “Special Rapporteur on the right to food,” is not going to Syria.

Instead, the UN’s food monitor is coming to investigate Canada.

That’s right. Despite dire food emergencies around the globe, De Schutter will be devoting the scarce time and resources of the international community on an 11-day tour of Canada—a country that ranks at the bottom of global hunger concerns.

A key co-ordinator and promoter of De Schutter’s mission is Food Secure Canada, a lobby group whose website accuses the Harper government of “failing Canadians…and [failing to] fulfill the right to food for all.” The group calls instead for a “People’s Food Policy.”

I asked De Schutter if his time wouldn’t better be spent on calling attention to countries that actually have starving people.

“Globally, 1.3 billion people are overweight or obese,” he responded via his spokesperson, “and this causes a range of diseases such as certain types of cancers, cardio-vascular diseases or (especially) type-2 diabetes that are a huge burden.”

In other words, the hunger expert is not even that interested in hunger, but the opposite. Sure, we should all eat less fries, but do Canadians need a costly UN inquiry to tell us that?

Before Canadians can take De Schutter seriously, they ought to ask him some serious questions about whether his mission is about human rights or a political agenda.

First, consider the origins of the UN’s “right to food” mandate. In voluminous background information provided by De Schutter and his local promoters, there’s no mention that their sponsor was Cuba, a country where some women resort to prostitution for food. De Schutter does not want you to know that Havana’s Communist government created his post, nor that the co-sponsors included China, North Korea, Iran and Zimbabwe.

These and other repressive regimes are seeking a political weapon to attack the West. That is why the first person they chose to fill the post, when it started in 2000, was Jean Ziegler. The former Swiss Socialist politician was a man they could trust: In 1989, he announced to the world the creation of the Muammar Gaddafi Human Rights Prize.

The award spread propaganda for its namesake, and elevated his ideological allies. Recipients include Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. In 2002, the prize went to convicted French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy — and to Jean Ziegler himself.

From 2000 to 2008, Ziegler’s UN reports and probes turned a blind eye to the world’s hungry. Instead he attacked America, the West, capitalism and Israel. The human rights council applauded him, and repeatedly renewed his mandate. Only because of term limits did they replace him in 2008 with De Schutter, who praises and emulates his predecessor.

De Schutter’s consistent argument is that if there is hunger, Western countries are to blame. His attacks on international trade are so ideologically extreme that even Pascal Lamy, head of the World Trade Organization and a member of the French Socialist party, criticized De Schutter’s approach for threatening to drive food prices higher and “exacerbating the negative impacts on poor consumers.”

In 2010 visit, UN expert held out Syria as a model: “UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Oliver De Schutter hailed Syria’s efforts and national plans to achieve food security,” reported Syria’s SANA news agency, during his Sept. 2010 visit. Above: De Schutter, left, with Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad. De Schutter “pointed out that other countries could benefit from Syria’s experience.” While the UN official heaped praise on the Assad regime, he voiced scathing criticism of the West and Israel. The Syrian regime rarely if ever welcomes international investigators, but De Schutter said that it was Damascus which reached out to invite him. He praised the regime for its “very high, excellent” level of cooperation and “openness.” He said it was “extremely encouraging, the sign Syria is giving by being so open and transparent in its co-operation with the human-rights council.” In light of what the world now knows, and Syria’s complete non-cooperation with the Geneva body, UN Watch today called on De Schutter to renounce his preposterous comments.

Second, even when they visit the right countries, Ziegler and De Schutter reach the wrong conclusions. Ziegler went to Cuba, but it was a staged visit that hailed Castro’s policies as almost divine. De Schutter went to Syria—in 2010, long before the current crisis — and mentioned several problems, but his report took pains to repeatedly praise the Assad regime.

Like Ziegler, De Schutter has repeatedly made one-sided attacks on Israel lacking any nexus to his mandate. Last July, he issued a pre-emptive attack against his own boss, in a press release titled “UN Special Rapporteur opposes Ban Ki-Moon’s conclusions on flotilla.” De Schutter was outraged that a panel appointed by the UN chief found that Israel’s blockade of Gaza, to stop Hamas importing Iranian missiles, was actually legal — contradicting what De Schutter’s human rights council had said the year before.

Hunger is a human rights issue. Tragically, what most interests De Schutter and his council is scapegoating the West. For the next two weeks, that means Canada.

Hillel Neuer, originally of Montreal, is executive director of UN Watch in Geneva.

National Post website

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NGO urges Ban Ki-moon, Navi Pillay and Olivier de Schutter to speak out 

GENEVA, October 24 — A Wikileaks cable circulated for the first time today reveals that Kofi Annan was in possession of an urgent World Food Program request to remove a UN Human Rights Council’s expert on hunger because he was playing “profoundly immoral” and “inflammatory” politics that “had a negative impact on the lives of the hungry.”  See detailed letter to Ban Ki-moon below. Click here for PDF.

The Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch today urged Ban Ki-moon and UN rights chief Navi Pillay to call on Jean Ziegler, the former UNHRC special rapporteur on the right to food, to resign from his continuing council mandates on hunger. As a member of the UNHRC Advisory Committee, Ziegler has participated on right to food drafting groups, and has been mandated to work on related reports, background papers and studies for the council.

Earlier this year, Swiss TV reported that Ziegler covered up his role as founder of the “Muammar Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights,” and 45 NGOs called on him to resign. 

UN Watch director Hillel Neuer also called on Olivier de Schutter, the council’s current special rapporteur, who reports today to the General Assembly, to repudiate Ziegler’s “politicized path.” Mr. de Schutter, who has expressed admiration for Ziegler, this year praised Syria’s Assad regime in a major report, often attacks the West and Israel, and has refused to explain why he is planning a country visit next May to food-secure Canada, instead of spotlighting food emergency countries like Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.

In 2008, Mr. de Schutter was appointed a “Special Senior Advisor” to UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockman, a former Sandinista politician who often embraces Iran’s Ahmadinejad and other anti-Western tyrants. Other appointees included Richard Falk, supporter of the 9/11 conspiracy theory; Ramsey Clark, who has defended Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Rwandan torturers; and Noam Chomsky, the anti-American guru.

_____________ 

October 24, 2011

Dear Mr. Secretary-General,

We write concerning the alarming revelation by Wikileaks that the World Food Program had sent urgent letters to your predecessor warning that Jean Ziegler, a UN Human Rights Council official tasked with combating hunger, has engaged in “profoundly immoral” actions and “inflammatory” politics that endanger the lives of millions of starving people worldwide.

We urge you to (a) commission an international and independent inquiry to determine who in the United Nations knew about this detailed warning, and why no remedial actions were taken to remove Mr. Ziegler, and prevent him from further harming the lives of hungry people; (b) demand that Mr. Ziegler immediately resign from all of his UNHRC responsibilities, especially those relating to hunger; and (c) take steps to ensure that Mr. Ziegler’s successor, Olivier de Schutter, refrains from following a similar path.

We enclose here one of the letters, dated 24 October 2002, from World Food Program Executive Director James T. Morris to Secretary-General Kofi Annan. An earlier letter to Mr. Annan by his predecessor, WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini, is referenced therein but has not yet been made public.

The enclosed WFP letter makes the most severe accusations against Jean Ziegler, who was the UN Human Right Council Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for the period 2000-2008. Mr. Ziegler continues to serve the UN Human Rights Council as a member of its Advisory Committee and to perform mandates for it concerning the right to food.

As you know, the World Food Program is the food aid arm of the United Nations system, the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide, feeding more than 90 million people in more than 70 countries.

In the enclosed letter, the World Food Program—the genuine expert on hunger—accuses Mr. Ziegler of making it “harder rather than easier for WFP to help hungry people fulfill their right to food in emergencies.” Mr. Ziegler, says the WFP, is “playing politics with aid,” and his actions and statements are “profoundly immoral” and “unconscionable.”

According to the World Food Program, the “clearly inflammatory politics played by Mr. Ziegler has had a negative impact on the lives of the hungry.” Moreover, Mr. Ziegler’s “public statements and the reports he has submitted to the General Assembly show a serious lack of understanding of economics and the details of the food situation in the areas he professes to analyze on behalf of the High Commissioner.”

The Wikileaks cable also reveals that the late UN rights chief Sergio de Mello, in a meeting with WFP Acting Deputy Executive Director Jean Jacques Graisse, reportedly expressed “considerable exasperation with Ziegler,” saying that “the man had taken up half of [de Mello’s] time since entering office.

In 2004, UN Watch published detailed reports on Mr. Ziegler’s record which corroborated the World Food Program’s disturbing findings, including our report “Blind to Burundi: Jean Ziegler’s Neglect of the World’s Food Emergencies.” We also documented Mr. Ziegler’s propaganda on behalf of the Gaddafi regime, including his key role in founding, managing and receiving the “Muammar Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights.” Tragically, even as the UN was in possession of WFP’s expert substantiation of this information, the world body ignored our appeals for action. Millions of hungry people have suffered as a result.

In light of the above, we respectfully urge you (a) to create an international and independent commission of inquiry to determine who in the United Nations knew about this detailed warning, and why no remedial actions were taken to remove Mr. Ziegler and prevent him from further harming the lives of hungry people; and (b) to call on Mr. Ziegler to resign from all of his ongoing UNHRC responsibilities, especially those relating to hunger.

In addition, we are concerned about actions by Mr. Ziegler’s successor, Mr. Olivier de Schutter, which seem to follow at least some of the same politicized agenda and misplaced priorities. For example, Mr. de Schutter is planning to conduct a special country visit to Canada in May 2012. However, he has refused to answer questions by UN Watch as to why a UN champion for starving people should be wasting precious time and resources visiting Canada, instead of spotlighting countries that do have food emergencies, such as Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Like Mr. Ziegler, who was often confused by media agencies with being the UNHRC expert on Palestine, Mr. de Schutter has repeatedly misused his mandate on hunger to make one-sided and political attacks on Israel that lack a genuine nexus to his mandate. For example, on July 7 of this year, Mr. de Schutter went so far as to issue a pre-emptive attack on one of your own statements, in a press release marked “Urgent” and entitled “UN Special Rapporteur opposes Ban Ki-Moon’s conclusions on flotilla.” It is rare for a UN rapporteur to attack a statement by the UN Secretary-General, and unprecedented to do so by anticipatory action.

Mr. de Schutter’s recent report on Syria, while mentioning several problems there, raises serious questions about his approach. The report takes pains to repeatedly praise and “commend” the Assad regime. “The Special Rapporteur commends the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic for its cooperation during the mission”; “The Special Rapporteur commends the efforts made to support agri-food economic activities with added value (for example, cheese-making)”; and the Special Rapporteur “applauded the efforts of the Government of Syria in seeking to provide food security to its population.”

Instead, Mr. de Schutter reserves his harshest language to attack the international community for its “unacceptably poor” response to Syrian drought, and to attack Israel for controlling the Golan Heights, which de Schutter inexplicably categorized as one of Syria’s three “huge challenges” regarding hunger.

Accordingly, we urge you to take steps to ensure that Mr. de Schutter refrains from following the same path as his predecessor.

There are millions of hungry people worldwide. They need the UN’s urgent help, not inflammatory politics. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director 

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Geneva, March 11, 2008 — The UN refused to publish a submission by a Geneva non-governmental organization detailing conflict of interest on the part of a UN rights official whose two reports released today heap praise on the Cuban and Bolivian governments. (See text below.) UN special rapporteur on the right to food Jean Ziegler has spoken frequently of his long-time admiration for revolutionary figures Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, as well as Bolivia’s left-wing leader Evo Morales.

“With children starving in Zimbabwe, Burundi and Sierra Leone, it is sad that Ziegler devoted his only country missions this year to supporting his political friends instead of fighting hunger,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer. “Ziegler’s October trip to Cuba, like his report today, was a stage-managed Potemkin visit for international consumption, designed to cleanse Cuba’s reputation after it eliminated the UN human rights council’s mandate on its abuses.”

According to the council’s rules, its experts must act with impartiality and objectivity. They are required to respect “truthfulness, loyalty and independence pertaining to their mandate,” and “uphold the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity, probity, impartiality, equity, honesty and good faith.”

Neuer questioned whether Ziegler’s actions met these standards.

“As a judge, UN high commissioner Louise Arbour should inform Ziegler of his obligation to recuse himself from reporting on government leaders that he has endorsed politically,” said Neuer.

In 1989 Ziegler went to Libya to help found the Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize, which was awarded to Castro in 1998 and to Morales in 2000. Ziegler returned to Libya in 2002 to win the prize himself, together with convicted Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.

While in Cuba this past October, Ziegler declined an invitation to meet dissidents because it might ”put in danger” his hosts’ ”openness.” Instead, he hailed the Castro regime as a model government — ”in the vanguard of the struggle for the right to food.”

“Never before in the history of the United Nations has there been a human rights expert whose country investigations are designed to praise, rather than critique, government actions,” said Neuer.

* * * *

The following was submitted as a NGO written statement to the current session of the UN Human Rights Council, but rejected by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. 
HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
Seventh session

Written statement submitted by UN Watch,
a non-governmental organization in special consultative status

Promotion and Protection of the Independence
and Impartiality of the Right to Food Mandate
(Item 3 — Right to Food)
UN Watch recalls the obligations under international law for UN human rights experts to be independent, impartial and non-selective.

In this regard, UN Watch regrets that these principles are called into question by the official visits undertaken by Mr. Jean Ziegler, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, to Bolivia (A/HRC/7/5/Add.2) and Cuba (A/HRC/7/5/Add.3).

UN experts make country visits in order to hold governments accountable to their commitments under international human rights law. Regrettably, here the Special Rapporteur did the opposite, making visits to Bolivia and Cuba in order to praise both governments. This has never been done before by any UN human rights expert.

Moreover, UN Watch regrets that the Special Rapporteur chose not to disclose to the Human Rights Council his particular history with the Morales government in Bolivia, and the Castro government in Cuba. In both instances, the principles of justice would have required him to recuse himself from reporting on these governments.

(a) Mr. Ziegler Should Have Disclosed Award in 2000 of Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize to Bolivian President Evo Morales

UN Watch regrets that the Special Rapporteur failed to disclose his role in granting an award in the year 2000 to Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, the Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize.

It is recalled that when the Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize was founded in 1989 in Geneva, Mr. Ziegler was a member of its founding committee and was chosen to announce it to the world:

[Swiss] Socialist deputy Jean Ziegler said a prize foundation fund in the name of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is registered in Geneva with capital of $10 million. Annual winners will be selected and foundation capital managed by a committee of African and European politicians and intellectuals, he said. “The prize is conceived as an anti-Nobel Peace prize award for the Third World,” Ziegler said in a statement. Ziegler said committee members besides himself include Sam Nujoma, leader of the Southwest African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) and [four others].
Switzerland’s L’Hebdo magazine reported:

According to Jean Ziegler, “the Nobel Prize is a permanent humiliation for the Third World.” The timing couldn’t be better—just as Libya is trying to restore its image. With the interest of 10 million dollars—placed in a Swiss bank—it plans to create an international institute for human rights (planned in Geneva) and two “counter-Nobel Prizes.” In mid-April, Jean Ziegler and ten “intellectuals and progressive fighters” thus found themselves in Tripoli to set the project on track.

Time magazine also reported on the Prize, citing Mr. Ziegler as a representative of the prize committee.

In the year 2000, the Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize was awarded to Bolivia’s Mr. Morales, “in recognition of his trade union and political struggle for the liberation of the Bolivian people and emancipation” and his “bold methods against domination and exploitation exercised by capitalist regimes, notably the United States of America.”

Other Prize winners have included prominent racists and anti-Semites. For example, Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader known for his black supremacist ideology and his frequent anti-Semitic statements, was awarded the Prize in 1996. Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammad—who told an October 2003 meeting of Islamic nations that Jews were responsible for all the world’s ills—was granted the prize in 2005. Other winners have included “the stone throwing children of Occupied Palestine.” In 2002, thirteen “intellectual and literary personalities” were given the prize for their “thought and creativity.” One of those chosen by the prize committee was Roger Garaudy, the convicted French Holocaust denier. Another was Mr. Ziegler himself.

(b) Mr. Ziegler Should Have Disclosed Cuba’s Sponsorshp of his UN Mandate, and Award in 1989 of Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize to former Cuban President Fidel Castro

UN Watch regrets that the Special Rapporteur failed to recuse himself or disclose to the Council his longstanding ties with the Cuban government, including the following:
:
• Cuba was the official sponsor of Mr. Ziegler’s UN appointment and renewal in 2000, 2003 and 2007. (See UN Resolutions E/CN.4/2000/L.19, E/CN.4/2003/L.27, and Resolution A/HRC/6/L.5, listing Cuba as sponsor.)

• In 1998, President Fidel Castro was awarded the Moammar Khaddafi Prize for Human Rights, the award, as indicated supra, co-founded by Mr. Ziegler nine years earlier.

• Mr. Ziegler’s longstanding ties to the Cuban government:
“[I]n 1964, Jean Ziegler … spent a long day serving as chauffeur to the revolutionary Ernesto (Che) Guevara, who was here as head of a Cuban trade delegation… Ziegler told Guevara that he wanted to emigrate to Cuba, to help the young Communist nation build a more just society. Guevara motioned to the shimmering lights of the wealthy lakeside city below. ‘Here is the brain of the monster,’ the revolutionary told the scholar. ‘Your fight is here.’” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 23, 1998.)

UN Watch also regrets that media reports uncritically accepted Mr. Ziegler’s comment that Cuba’s invitation to him was “a signal that Cuba is opening up.”

While in Cuba, Mr. Ziegler reportedly declined an invitation to meet dissidents because, he said, it might “put in danger” his hosts’ “openness.” Instead, he hailed the Castro regime as a model government “in the vanguard of the struggle for the right to food.”

Conclusion

We remind the Special Rapporteur of his obligations under international human rights law to be independent, impartial and non-selective.

The post Conflict of Interest: UN’s Jean Ziegler made country visits to praise political friends, not fight world’s hunger emergencies appeared first on UN Watch.

Geneva, Oct. 25, 2006 —UN Watch today called on Jean Ziegler, the UN hunger expert scheduled to address the General Assembly this afternoon, to resign from his position as vice-president of the “Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize” organization.  The Geneva-based non-governmental organization said that Mr. Ziegler’s political and financial ties to a dictator associated with torture and other abuses jeopardized the credibility of his mandate as the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

The Khaddafi Prize, established by the Libyan dictator with Mr. Ziegler’s help in 1989, has been awarded to several individuals accused of racism and anti-Semitism, including Louis Farrakhan and Mahathir Mohammed, as well as convicted Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy.  Other winners of the award include anti-Western leaders such as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, and organizations who lobbied at the UN against the sanctions imposed on Libya after its agents bombed Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.  According to Libya’s state-controlled news agency, Mr. Ziegler himself won the award in 2002, in the same year as Garaudy.  Awardees have received two-hundred thousand dollars or more.

As recently documented by UN Watch and reported in a front page exposé in the leading Swiss newspaper Neue Zuricher Zeitung , Mr. Ziegler is vice-president of a group of interconnected organizations in Geneva known as “Nord-Sud XXI” that manage and award the Khaddafi Prize. Government records, UN documents and international news sources show that, despite recent denials by Mr. Ziegler, he played a leading role in founding the Khaddafi Prize, has maintained an ongoing relationship with the Prize organization, and himself won—but did not disclose his connections to—the Prize in 2002.

“Mr. Ziegler’s ties to the Khaddafi Prize conflict with the high standards of independence, impartiality and integrity required of a Special Rapporteur,” said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.  “An independent UN human rights expert should not be connected to any government, let alone a dictatorship that is routinely rated among Freedom House’s Worst of the Worst human rights abusing regimes. In the world of human rights, Mr. Ziegler is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Notwithstanding Libya’s recent renunciation of weapons of mass destruction in return for international favor, Khaddafi continues to rule by fiat, denying freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and other basic civil rights and liberties.  Security forces have the power to pass sentence without trial. Arbitrary arrest and torture are commonplace.  The Libyan government is seeking to execute five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, on trumped-up charges that they contaminated 400 children with HIV/AIDS.

“Jean Ziegler’s entanglement with the Libyan regime is not the only example of his disrespect for the standards that UN human rights experts are supposed to uphold,” according to Neuer. “In the six years he has held the position, Mr. Ziegler has consistently abused his UN mandate to further a radical political agenda, which includes frivolous claims that the U.S. is committing ‘genocide’ against Cuba.”  Last year Mr. Ziegler became the first UN rights expert to be publicly criticized by Secretary-General Annan and High Commissioner for Human Rights Arbour, after he compared Israelis to Nazi concentration camp guards.

Mr. Ziegler’s polemics were on display again recently at the Human Rights Council. On October 4, Mr. Ziegler presented a report on this summer’s conflict in Lebanon that went far beyond food issues, broadly condemning Israeli “war crimes” but making no mention of Hezbollah.  “I refuse to describe Hezbollah as a terrorist organization,” said Ziegler in an interview with Al Akhbar , a Lebanese newspaper, on September 19, 2006.  “It is a national movement of resistance. . .  I can understand Hizbollah when they kidnap soldiers in order to exchange them.”  Mr. Ziegler’s one-sided report to the council stood in marked contrast to the balanced report of four other Special Rapporteurs, presented on the same day, which criticized both Israel and Hezbollah for violations.

In April, an international coalition of 20 human rights groups, including victims of the Libyan regime, signed an appeal opposing the Human Rights Council’s renewal of Mr. Ziegler’s term.  See full text here.

The post General Assembly Today Hears From Khaddafi Prize Founder appeared first on UN Watch.

Analysis:  Jean Ziegler has been waging a public relations war against Israel ever since his appointment four years ago, and now he has escalated his efforts to a trade war.  His demand that Europe boycott Israel follows a similar demand sent in May to a U.S. corporation.  UN Watch has been at the forefront of exposing Ziegler’s astonishing bias, and continues to fight for an end to his cynical abuse of a noble position.

When he should be speaking out for the hungry of Burundi, Chad, or Liberia — places that actually do rank as Food Emergencies — Ziegler is instead preoccupied with vilifying Israel for, as he puts it, starving the Palestinians.  His accusation will resonate with certain audiences.  Yet it carries one minor flaw:  whatever genuine problems do exist in the West Bank and Gaza, starvation is simply not one of them.   In fact, by any comparative measure, Palestinians are eating far better than neighboring populations.  If one looks at the percentage of underweight children — the most meaningful cross-country comparable indicator — the UN’s 2003 Human Development Report reports that the West Bank and Gaza has the lowest rate (3%)  compared with any state in the Arab Middle East, East Asia, the Pacific, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America (except Chile).  Yet a country like North Korea (60%) has never been targeted by a single Ziegler boycott letter.

The truth about Ziegler, as a simple Google search will reveal, is that his “right to food” activities are in fact initiated as part of orchestrated political campaigns.  Not coincidentally, Ziegler, who resides in Switzerland, sent his May 2004 boycott letter to Caterpillar three days after a political “action” notice was issued against this corporation by “Collectif Urgence Palestine” — a Swiss group, dedicated to boycotting Israel, with which Mr. Ziegler has been active.  Mr. Ziegler’s letter was then promptly posted on the website of this group’s boycott campaign.  How many other boycott letters Ziegler has sent is a mystery.  Their target is not.

It was telling on Friday that when reporters in Brussels asked the European Commission to respond to Ziegler’s latest boycott demand, they innocently described him as “the Special Rapporteur on Palestine” — not realizing this position is properly held by another individual (John Dugard, no great Lover of Zion he).  Then again, Ziegler doesn’t seem to realize that, either.

In July, UN Watch filed a brief with the Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights requesting Ziegler be removed for blatantly violating his obligations to act with impartiality, non-selectivity and objectivity.  The Commission has yet to reply.  Meantime, a UN Watch delegation led by its Chairman, Amb. Alfred H. Moses, met last week with Louise Arbour, the new High Commissioner of Human Rights, to urge that she do her part against Ziegler’s wrongdoing.

But if the UN rights experts are independent, and accountable only to the Commission’s 53 member states, why should High Commissioner Arbour, who presides over a department of professional staff, be required to play any role here?

Two reasons.  First, to ensure that her staff no longer provides support related to Ziegler’s unauthorized activities.  That means her human rights officers must be instructed to refuse to help Ziegler with his unauthorized boycott campaign.  Second, to clarify that while Ziegler sends his boycott letters under the letterhead of “United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,” he in fact speaks for himself only.

True, these are only two small steps.  But they would prevent the dangerous inference that the High Commissioner supports Ziegler’s unlawful activities.  More, they would send the right message that the world’s human rights victims are owed nothing less than the integrity of the UN mechanisms created for their benefit.

The post Issue 123: UN Expert on Hunger Irrationally Ignores World’s Food Emergencies to Pursue Personal Political Agenda appeared first on UN Watch.

Analysis:  Food is one of life’s basic necessities.  Without adequate food, we don’t work well; we don’t study; we don’t enjoy any facet of life.  Using this logic, Jean Ziegler expounds his views on political and security questions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, far exceeding his mandate to report on the right to food.

Ziegler was the first UN Special Rapporteur with whom Israeli officials agreed to meet to discuss human rights issues in the West Bank and Gaza.  What could have been a productive cooperation turned into a rant against the policies of the current Israeli government.

He states, for example, that “[t]he building of the security fence/apartheid wall constitutes a violation of the obligation to respect the right to food because it does not follow the 1967 border.” Similarly off-topic, Ziegler reports that “if there were no settlements, then there would be no need for harsh internal closures.”

Liberally handling cause and effect, Ziegler argues from the outset that the entire Palestinian humanitarian crisis is a result of Israeli military actions.  While closures are clearly the proximate cause of the Palestinian economic crisis, the reason for the closures is no less obvious: Palestinian terrorism.  Despite meeting with senior Israeli military officials, who must have explained the connection, Ziegler chose to ignore them.  Instead he cites only the opinions of his co-ideologues on the far left, such as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and activist Michael Warschawski, who consider the closures and separation fence to be “collective punishment.”

Summing up his twenty-five page report, Ziegler writes: “as most of the violations of the right to food stem from the occupation by the Government of Israel of the Palestinian Territories, the occupation should be ended and the Government should withdraw its forces to the 1967 borders.”

Such a political judgment is extremely inappropriate for the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food to make, yet it is the theme of his entire report.  Also inappropriate was the manner in which it was made public.

UN protocol calls for Special Rapporteurs to submit their draft reports to the concerned country to allow for a response before the report is finalized and publicized.  Ziegler, however, provided information to the Swiss press before the Israeli Mission had even received a copy.  Subsequently, the story was picked up by a major wire service, Agence France Press, which reported that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food had accused Israel of “triggering a humanitarian catastrophe.”

By abusing his position to promote his politics, Ziegler squandered an opportunity to play a positive humanitarian role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to demonstrate the possibility of evenhandedness by the UN towards Israel.

The post issue 110: Jean Ziegler’s Visit to Israel appeared first on UN Watch.