UN rights council fails to reach decisions on worst abuses
Oct 6, 2006 (GENEVA) — The fledgling U.N. Human Rights Council ended its second session on Friday after failing to approve any decisions addressing the world’s worst abuses.
The failure to reach agreement on the most hotly debated issues was criticized by the U.S. and the E.U.
“We are disappointed that this just-concluded session of the council accomplished little to protect and promote human rights,” said Warren W. Tichenor, ambassador of the U.S. mission to the U.N. in Geneva. “It could not reach agreement to address egregious violations of human rights in places such as Sudan.”
It should have reaffirmed the fundamental freedom of expression and the press, said Tichenor, who heads the U.S. observer delegation to the 47-member council.
The E.U., which has six members on the rights watch dog, also expressed disappointment through Finland, which currently holds the presidency of the 25-nation bloc.
“We would like to have a more substantive result,” Satu Mattila, deputy chief of the Finish mission to the U.N. in Geneva, told The Associated Press.
Mexican Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba, who chairs the council, tried in recent days to get consensus on a statement expressing concern about Darfur, the Middle East, religious intolerance and the “right to development,” but time ran out on his efforts as the council wound up its session Friday evening.
Mattila said Sudan has been one of the E.U.’s priorities. “We’re very concerned about the situation, and we had wanted to have something on Sudan.”
In Sudan, fighting between the government and rebel groups has left more than 200,000 dead and displaced some 2.5 million since 2003. The U.N. has called it the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
De Alba’s proposed statement was meant to unite the council around some generally agreed issues at the end of its three-week session. The body was supposed to vote on 48 resolutions about human rights problems in different countries, but was so divided that it put off the voting until the next meeting at the end of November.
Human Rights Watch, a major campaign organization, said the council, which held its first session in June and July, was disappointing as a successor to the widely discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission.
“The U.N. Human Rights Council adjourned its second regular session today without taking any effective action to address the worlds human rights crises,” said Peggy Hicks of Human Rights Watch. “States with poor human rights records dominated the council’s deliberations and countries more committed to human rights failed to exercise effective leadership.”
“In the face of atrocities in the Sudan, attacks on civilians in Sri Lanka and impunity for mass murder in Uzbekistan, this council was largely silent,” Hicks said.
(AP/ST)