U.S. To Join U.N. Human Rights Council
The Washington Post just reported :
The Obama administration decided Tuesday to join the U.N. Human Rights Council, reversing a decision by the Bush administration to shun the United Nations’ premier rights body to protest the influence of repressive states, according to U.N. diplomats and rights activists.
And:
The United States will participate in elections in May for one of three seats on the 47-member council, joining a slate that includes Belgium, Norway and New Zealand. New Zealand has offered to step aside to allow the United States to run unchallenged, according to a U.S. official.
Human rights activists have been advocating U.S. membership in the council since its creation in March 2006. The United States is expected to announce its plan to join later Tuesday.
“This is a welcome step that gives the United States and other defenders of human rights a fighting chance to make the institution more effective,” said a human rights advocate familiar with the decision. “I think everybody is just desperate to have the United States and Barack Obama run for the human rights council, and countries are willing to bend over backward to make that happen.”
Some , predictably, will condemn this decision. Others, like myself, welcome it.
7 Responses to “U.S. To Join U.N. Human Rights Council”
Bad news for all liberal democracies and anyone who cares about human rights.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Shari Hillman
Phone: 202-638-6688
E-mail: press@rjchq.org
RJC Outraged by Obama Administration's Decision
on UN Human Rights Council
Washington, D.C. (March 31, 2009) The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) expressed outrage at news reports that the United States will seek to join the United Nations Human Rights Council.
RJC Executive Director Matthew Brooks issued the following statement:
We are outraged to learn that President Barack Obama has decided to change the Bush administration's policy of boycotting the U. N. Human Rights Council. The Human Rights Council is an arena in which undemocratic regimes, such as Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Angola, have equal standing with truly free countries such as Canada, France, and the United Kingdom.
The Council's record of upholding human rights is abysmal. The Council has failed to address some of the most serious human rights abuses of our time, including those taking place in Darfur. It is especially blind to human rights abuses by its own member countries.
On the other hand, the Council is a central venue for the most virulent Israel-bashing. Anne Bayefsky has reported that the Council, “has adopted more condemnations of Israel than all the other 191 U.N. states combined, while terminating human rights investigations on the likes of Iran, Cuba and Belarus.
Much of the Council's agenda is at the behest of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the resolutions it submits to the General Assembly are unremittingly anti-Israel and anti-Western. The Bush administration, and other Western governments, have strongly opposed attempts in the Human Council to pass resolutions that would limit the right of free speech in democracies.
President Bush understood that there could be no positive result from American participation in an international body so inherently hostile to Israel and so fundamentally incapable of acting in defense of human rights. That President Obama has chosen to reverse American policy on this question is a blow to the U.S.-Israel relationship and a cause for deep concern among American Jews.
I understand the concerns voiced by the RJC.
I believe that it is easier to steer an organization into the right course from the inside than from the outside.
Dorian -
Sorry, but I think the appropriate saying for this is 'He that lieth down with Dogs, shall rise up with Fleas.' – Benjamin Franklin
Touché, AR.
But,
“Be careful — with quotations, you can damn anything.” — Andre Malraux
Having said that, here's mine:
“If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” — Moshe Dayan
Dorian
OK, one more, from my side of the discussion:
“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill
I really don't see how our joining is a good thing for the U.S. At best, things get no better, as we have no veto power, and are one of the main targets this sham organization uses from it's bully pulpit to try and tear down. At worst, we are providing an air of respectability to their bile by our presence, an implication of validity to their spiteful resolutions and proclamations.
As Churchill said, we need to stand up for something. We do not need to get sucked into the vortex of hate and justifications for abuse spit out by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is truly one of the most Orwellian-named quasi-governmental bodies in human history.
There. I think I have made my position pretty clear.
Got to love the hypocrisy.
We have former senior government officials who cannot go to Europe for fear of being arrested for violating human rights, TORTURE.
Is this the Human Rights Organization that had Libya or Iran or something as the leader. Personally see no harm in joining but also see no good.