UN Human Rights Council needs 2/3 OK for membership – HRW
Feb 2, 2006 (GENEVA) — Members of the proposed new United Nations Human Rights Council should be elected by two-thirds of the global body’s general assembly to ensure abusive governments aren’t chosen, the head of Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
The latest draft of an agreement to set up the council -which would replace the largely discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission – doesn’t yet specify how members would be chosen. But Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth warned a simple majority election would allow states that routinely commit abuses to sit on the council.
“It is absolutely essential that a two-thirds majority be required for membership on the new council,” Roth told reporters at U.N. offices in Geneva. “Nothing short of a two-thirds majority will provide adequate guarantees that the council will not simply replicate the devastating membership problems of the commission.”
The current Human Rights Commission has been widely criticized as an irrelevant body powerless to stamp out abuses because its members include some of the worst offenders and it has no mandate to impose punishments. Members in recent years have included Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba.
Although there is a broad consensus about the need for reform, diplomats say opinions diverge over who should sit on the new Human Rights Council and how powerful it should be. Some countries – including Cuba and members of the Islamic conference currently led by Pakistan – want the body’s powers to be weakened further, calling for all forms of censure to be eliminated.
Roth said that “highly abusive governments” – including Egypt, Pakistan, Sudan and Venezuela – were pushing for simple majority election to the new council. Governments which are “more friendly” to human rights, such as the European Union, U.S. and many countries in Latin America and Africa, favor a two-thirds election.
This year’s six-week session of the Human Rights Commission, scheduled to start in Geneva in March, should be its last and set up the first meeting of the council in June, Roth said.
(AP/ST)