Sudan, whose leader is wanted for genocide in Darfur, is itself a victim of human rights violations, according to an official of the UN Human Rights Council, who blasted U.S. sanctions in a report delivered today before the 47-member body.
Idriss Jazairy, whose title is “UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impacts of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights,” was appointed this year to head a Cuban-initiated UNHRC mandate that defines all U.S. sanctions against rogue regimes as violations of human rights.
Jazairy blamed U.S. sanctions on Sudan for damaging the right to life, the right to health, the right to development, the right to potable water, the right to work, the right to education, the right of the elderly, the rights of people with disability, women’s rights, the rights of the child, and the right to food:
Unilateral coercive measures targeting the Sudan restrict trade and investment in the country, which in turn forces the population to face enormous challenges to their enjoyment of human rights. Coercive measures affect the right to health and an adequate standard of living, the right to food, the right to education and the right to development.
Jazairy: Nemesis of UN rights experts, then himself a UN rights expert
Hypocrisy reached new heights in March 2015 when the UNHRC appointed Jazairy as one of its human rights monitors: he is the same man who, as Algerian ambassador, personally headed a major campaign to muzzle the Council’s human rights monitors, by imposing a “Code of Conduct.”
UN Watch sounded the alarm before he was appointed in 2015, but to no avail.
(Update: In October 2016, the Tribune de Geneve exposed Jazairy’s conflict of interest in being a UN expert and also heading a front group funded by the United Arab Emirates.)
As Algerian ambassador on the UNHRC, Jazairy also took many other actions inimical to the protection and promotion of human rights:
- After Sri Lanka killed 40,000 of its own people, Jazairy co-sponsored a 2009 resolution that praised Sri Lanka for “promotion and protection of all human rights”
- Genocide by Sudan in Darfur didn’t stop Jazairy from sponsoring a 2006 resolution that praised the regime for “cooperation,” while demanding that the international community “honor their pledges of support” and “provide urgent and adequate financial and technical assistance to the Government of Sudan.”
- Jazairy repeatedly defended genocidal Sudan. When UN monitors reported attacks on Darfur civilians by Sudanese government-allied militias, they were immediately challenged by Jazairy: “And I say the alleged links between the government of Sudan, and the militias referred to by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, have yet to be objectively documented.” Click here for video
- Asked by French journalist Caroline Fourest why certain Arab countries imprisoned homosexuals, contrary to human rights, Jazairy said that gay rights was a “Western-centric” attitude, having no basis in universal human rights.
- Jazairy headed a major effort to change international law to prohibit criticism of Islam, under the “Defamation of religion” banner. Jazairy’s non-paper wrote: “Requisite complementary standards shall include the prohibition of publication of material that direct seriously offensive attacks on matters regarded by followers of any religion or belief as sacred or inherent to their dignity as human beings.”
- Jazairy repeatedly sought to distort the meaning of the word anti-Semitism, saying that it 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 19th 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 received $50,000 from the Russian Federation for his UN mandate. (UN 2017 report, A/HRC/34/34/Add.1, p.37) Coincidentally, his application clarified his vision of the anti-American mandate—which included 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.”
