UN tramples its own ideals

UN tramples its own ideals

The UN General Assembly has once again openly mocked some of the major principles it purports to champion. It has elected several of the world's worst human rights violators as full members of its Human Rights Commission. In the process, it employed a questionable procedure in which there was no competition. Member countries of the UNGA were presented with 18 candidate-nations for 18 pending vacancies on the UNHRC. In the event, as usual in such UN processes, none of the candidates failed to gain a majority vote, so the 48-member UNHRC will at least have all its seats filled when it meets in Geneva next year.

The process was questionable, the results uneven, to say the least. Against the principles of the "new" UNHRC established by secretary-general Kofi Annan in 2006, there was no open competition for the UNHRC seats. Diplomats and UN bureaucrats picked the so-called candidates based entirely on a combination of geography and length of service. The first criterion was the location of the countries. Seats were allotted to the Asia-Pacific, the Americas, Africa and two zones of Europe, east and west.

The candidates for the final election then were put on the list according to "last out, first in". The five Asian nations that have had their UNHRC seats for the shortest time were the five put on the election list. They were India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Fiji and Bahrain. The same procedure was used for the other regions.

Unsurprisingly, all nominated countries were approved. This is a diplomatic nicety of mutual blessing. It's also far different from the checks-and-balances system set up by Mr Annan in 2006. That process tried to ensure that countries accused of egregious human rights violations never got a chair.

Thais will remember the fierce competition this country had to endure to make it onto the council. Thailand was a declared candidate for the UNHRC from the beginning. The excesses of the Thaksin government's "war on drugs" and the 2006 military coup meant that the country was bypassed as a human rights violator. In 2010, with a civilian government and a plan for imminent elections, Thailand finally was elected. It is ironic that the issue that initially kept Thailand off the UNHRC in its early years -- the war on drugs -- was completely ignored in the election our neighbour and fellow Asean founder, the Philippines.

The death toll of President Rodrigo "The Punisher" Duterte's personal war on drugs has passed 4,500. This is already 50% worse than Thailand under Thaksin. Mr Duterte is under investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for possible crimes against humanity. Not a single debate speech mentioned this, let alone opposed the Manila candidacy.

Today, China and Saudi Arabia also sit on the UNHRC, supposedly the role model for the world in the battle for human and civil rights. China has admitted it runs forced "re-education" camps for 1 million Muslim citizens. Riyadh is currently suspected of ordering the murder of a prominent journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

The evolving process at the UNGA is moving away from favouring nations with decent respect for human rights and back to the terrible system that prevailed before 2006. That allowed every country a seat on the Human Rights Council. This is a travesty that harms victims, trivialises the very worst government violence and shuts eyes to the treatment of innocents around the world. No country has a perfect human rights record, but it is facetious and injurious to claim that all countries' records are equal.

The UNHRC was supposed to be a role model in the battle for human and civil rights everywhere. Membership by known violators makes the goal impossible.

Editorial

Bangkok Post editorial column

These editorials represent Bangkok Post thoughts about current issues and situations.

Email : anchaleek@bangkokpost.co.th

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