US angry that UN rights panel won’t disqualify repressive governments
By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON, Dec 8, 2004 (AP) — Most people would say countries that tolerate slavery should be ineligible for membership on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Same goes for those guilty of crimes against humanity.
The presumption is that egregious rights violators have no business on a commission whose prime purpose is supposed to be to protect rights.
But in a report last week, a U.N. panel established by Secretary-General Kofi Annan rejected the notion that there should be any standards at all for membership on the Human Rights Commission, recommending that all 191 U.N. member states be allowed to join.
That means Sudan need not worry about losing its seat on the 53-member commission even though the country stands accused by the United States of committing genocide in its western Darfur province.
At the U.S. State Department, frustration over the commission is accelerating, and officials wonder how long the United States can justify its continued membership on the panel if current trends continue.
Of particular concern to Washington is an expected move next year to prohibit the introduction of commission resolutions aimed at specific countries.
That would bar the United States from proposing measures critical of human rights policies in China and Cuba, as Washington does virtually every year at the annual commission meetings in Geneva. If the ban should pass, the commission could do little more than approve resolutions condemning religious persecution or suppression of labor without identifying perpetrators.
Led by China, many lesser developed countries resent the emphasis on human rights by the United States and other industrialized democracies. Their priorities are economic rights and economic development. China’s representative on the Annan commission made this view clear, with strong support from African countries, particularly South Africa.
It is not only poorer countries that consider U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba unjust. Votes against the Cuba embargo in the U.N. General Assembly are routine every year. This year’s vote was 179 to 4 against the four-decade old policy, with only the United States, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau in support.
The United States finds the General Assembly’s record on Sudan especially appalling. Last month, the Assembly refused even to consider a Sudan resolution sponsored by the European Union to condemn Sudan’s record in Darfur.
The outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, used highly undiplomatic language in describing what he regards as the Assembly’s insensitivity to the suffering in Darfur, where well over 1 million black Africans have been uprooted from their homes by government-backed Arab militias.
“The message from the General Assembly is very simple, and it is: You may be suffering, but we can’t be bothered,” Danforth said.
At another point, he said persistent failures of U.N. members “to present a unified front against well-documented atrocities would represent nothing less than the complete breakdown of the U.N.’s deliberative bodies related to human rights. ”
Danforth announced his resignation in November after only five months at the U.N. post. He said he wanted to spend more time with his family, but he also had indicated beforehand that he did not intend to remain on the job very long because of frustrations over Sudan and other issues.
This past spring, the Africa bloc, showing disdain for Western concern over Sudan, nominated the Islamic government for a third consecutive term on the U.N. rights commission.
When the United States registered its disapproval, a Sudanese diplomat, Omar Bashir Manis, said it was ironic for Washington to raise objections in light of the “atrocities” committed by American forces at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Election to a seat for Sudan “is not at all different” from the United States itself winning a seat, said Manis, who saw the Abu Ghraib scandal as a handy way to question whether Washington has the moral authority to criticize the rights performance of others.