The UN Human Rights Council has shortlisted the 79-year-old Idriss Jazairy, Algeria’s former representative to the 47-nation body, to head a new post backed by Cuba and designed to classify U.S. sanctions against rogue regimes as violations of human rights.
The new “Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights” will be appointed at the end of March during the current month-long session of the UNHRC.
When he sat on the Council from 2004 to 2012, Jazairy was a leading force in turning human rights on their head. He led the “defamation of Islam” campaign, denying radical Islamic terrorism, demonizing cartoonists, and undermining basic freedom of speech.
He has famously and repeatedly stated that anti-Semitism targets Arabs and Muslims.
At an April 22, 2008 U.N. meeting on racism, he declared that “Antisemitism targets Arabs, who are also Semites, and by extension, the whole Muslim community.”
In 2011, he elaborated:
Already in the XIXth century Arabs and Jews, who equally belong to the Semitic race, were the target of the same anti-Semitic stereotyping… Since the holocaust, fortunately anti-Semitism targeting the Jews has been eschewed from public speech. However, it continues to be accepted in the name of freedom of expression when it takes the form of Arabophobia, or by extension, of Islamophobia.
Jazairy’s application clarifies his vision of the anti-American mandate, which includes shilling for Vladimir Putin’s aggression:
I regard UCMs [unilateral coercive measures] as an issue which principally affects North-South relations and see this mandate as an opportunity to put to use my experience of half a century in multilateralism as a bridge-builder between North and South. Pre-Helsinki UCMs were an expression of East-West rivalry. Alas! increased tension over Crimea and Ukraine has all but revived this situation. The impact of UCMs on human rights being conversely related to the level of development of the targeted countries, the people of the South are the most vulnerable to Northern “sanctions.”
Given the purpose of this UN mandate, Jazairy might be the most suitable candidate of all.
