How the U.N. Human Rights Council Ends Up With So Many Human Rights Abusers

A lot of it comes down to politics.

By
8

As the U.N. Human Rights Council wrapped up its session this week, it passed 13 resolutions dealing with human rights abuses in varying regions of the world: Eritrea (for war crimes in the Ethiopian region of Tigray), Belarus (for ongoing civil society repression), Myanmar (for the ongoing genocide of Rohingya Muslims), and others.

What’s notable about the resolution on Eritrea is that Eritrea is actually a member of the UNHRC. Should an organization with a mission “to work for the protection of all human rights for all people; to help empower people to realize their rights; and to assist those responsible for upholding such rights in ensuring that they are implemented” welcome as members the very states carrying out abuses?

Such cognitive dissonance leads many to question the value of a governing body on human rights. Along with Eritrea, Venezuela, Somalia, Russia, and China are current members of the council. It’s a problem that has plagued the council for years, and even a reorganization (from commission to council) undertaken by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2006 has done little to fix the problem.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights was originally founded in 1946, and produced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in its first meeting in 1947. Eleanor Roosevelt was the United States delegate to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), and served as the first chairperson of the commission. For its first two decades, the commission primarily worked to promote human rights through treaties, including the 1951 conference on refugees and stateless persons and the 1967 Protocol, which removed a geographic restriction on the 1951 treaty. 

Keep reading with a free account
Create a free Dispatch account to keep reading Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
8
By
Comments (8)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Avatar photo
    David Chen

    UNHRC is like an organization designed by someone who watches She-Ra but populated by the factions of Warhammer 40k. If the UNHRC took issue with something I'm doing, my hunch is that I'm doing something right.

    Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    Henry Clemens

    As a retired Am. diplomat with considerable UN experience, I am all too familiar with the process by which members of the Human Rights Council (or the Security Council) are chosen, and the frequently justified Am. objections. Sometimes we mount opposition candidates to an especially outrageous regionally-blessed candidate, and if our objections are well-founded, if we quietly gather allies, and our diplomatic efforts are well coordinated and professional (not tub-thumping domestically targeted speeches by the Nikki Haleys of this world who are justifiably seen as being more out for themselves than in serving the interests of serious diplomacy), we succeed, but it is never easy.

    And our objections are not automatically supported, even by such as the UK or other Europeans, in great part because they detect an inappropriate degree of hypocrisy in our insistence that, eg., Israel is the object of egregiously unfair attacks — which is true enough, but then they know that even when Israel is a serious offender, we do our best to block any criticism.

    And our allies are perhaps more willing to deal with a system that is unavoidably political, and try to work quietly to gain at the margin, something that the John Boltons of this world seem to disdain. Americans might remember that the same political factors, mutatis mutandis, affect our own system from time to time. I, at least, am old enough to remember James Eastland, an outrageously racist senator from Mississippi, who was elected to the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee and President Pro Tem of the Senate. But his record was overlooked in the interests of seniority and political reciprocity— essentially the same dynamic that governs regional-group selection in the UN context. But Sen. Eastland was, in current thinking, long ago — and American, which is a special case and not at all analogous to an un-American and compromised organization like the UN.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      rlritt

      Very interesting.

      Collapse
  3. Avatar photo
    Bill Nelson

    “...the commission's declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole...”
    The UN is an organization in which each nation is the same as any other. That the UN was an organization which could promote human rights was a progressive fallacy that some believe in. China is going to do whatever they wish.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      David Chen

      Conceptually, the UN sounds dumber and dumber the older I get.

      Collapse
  4. Avatar photo
    Nick H

    Everyone advising that the US should remain involved with the UNHRC, saying that we shouldn't be throwing up our hands in despair, seems to think that the UNHRC is the only path for advancements in human rights, and that if we aren't part of the council then there's no other solutions to be found. That's nonsense. There's nothing magical about the UNHRC, and until it's massively reformed it does more harm than help. It would be better for the US to work with other like minded countries and form a new organization, outside of the auspices of the UN, to further the cause of human rights.

    Collapse
  5. Avatar photo
    Victor Clairmont

    It is not because of the UN or the UNHRC that victims of today have recourse at all. These institutions and organizations can only exist because of one prime reason:

    That the United States polices the majority of the world, keeps 80% of the high sea’s free, and since World War II has had the legitimate role of world peacekeeper put upon us that our great grandparents accepted.

    It is not the UN Russia fears if they go to far into the Baltic’s, it NATO with America as the tip of the spear.

    It is not the UN or the UNHRC that China hesitates on for invading Taiwan, it’s the reaction of America.

    Any recourse many poor people have appealing to these institutions, is simply because there is one dominant military force in the world still, America.

    And while it may be a good idea to use such institutions so that we have a “voice” in them, the reality is more often than not, that these institutions are useless against strong despotic tyrants like Russia or China.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      El Duderino

      As Al Capone said, You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

      Collapse