NEW YORK — File this under: Why do we need the U.N., again? In
case you missed this story, the world’s most discredited
institution continued its steady slide into irrelevance last week
when it confirmed a serial human rights abuser for a third term as
a member its High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR).
For those unfamiliar with the confirmation process, it works
more or less like this: Choose a country that regularly and
mercilessly suppresses human rights — a cinch considering the
majority of the commission’s 53 member countries, save the U.S. and
handful of others, fit the description. Then, charge said country
with upholding and extending human rights around the world, the
thinking being that…well, no one is quite sure. What is
certain is that the process, a kind of affirmative action for
dictators, works every time. Sound frightening? Never fear: As of
last week, Sudan is back on the job.
Now, it’s tempting to denounce the continued presence of the
Khartoum’s barbaric Islamists as yet another low for the UNHCHR,
especially when they are busy at work trying to wipe half of
Sudan’s civilian population off the map. But here is what’s more
damning: Sudan’s membership does little to sully UNHCHR’s
reputation. After all, Sudan is rejoining a roster of inveterate
human rights violators: Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and China are
all proud UNHCHR members. So is the Democratic Republic of Congo,
which, it bears noting, is neither democratic, nor a republic.
(Nor, indeed, were one to ask the Ugandan and Rwandan
paramilitaries who presently obtain in the country’s eastern
province, a Congo.)
One bright spot in the UNHCHR’s ongoing charade is that is just
that: an ongoing charade. That meant plenty of entertainment at
Turtle Bay last week. By far the best performance was turned in by
the U.S. representative to the commission, Sichan Siv. Incensed by
Sudan’s confirmation, Siv raged at Sudan’s serial human rights
abuses, tartly noting that its membership threatened to undermine
the UNHCHR’s work. A pro of the dramatic exit, Siv then stormed out
of the U.N. conference hall, grumbling about not wanting “to
participate in such absurdity.”
It was an inspiring performance, not least because no one can do
moral outrage quite like American delegates to the U.N., for whom
it is practically a job requirement. Personally, though, I don’t
buy this business about Sudan undermining the UNHCHR’s work. Why?
Well, let’s revisit the so-called work the commission has done over
the last year.
FACED WITH STEPPED-UP repression against Iranian reformists, the
UNHCHR decided altogether to suspend its scrutiny of Iran.
Questionable to the human rights-minded, this was exactly what the
UNHCHR’s dictators ordered: Having distanced themselves from the
distasteful task of censuring actual human rights abuses, the
UNHCHR was now free to carry out what for years has been its sole
function: finding new ways to lay the blame for the latest horror
of Palestinian terrorism squarely on the Zionist entity, which, as
many know, is U.N.-speak for Israel. In fact, inflammatory
resolutions that demonize Israel, of which no fewer than five were
adopted last year, encounter no opposition from the Jewish state.
The Middle East’s lone democracy is not a UNHCHR member.
And rogue states aren’t the only ones who have learned to abuse
the UNHCHR. Russia too is getting the hang of it, as the
Moscow-backed resolution that last year wended its way through the
commission suggests. Purportedly drafted to combat resurgent
Nazism, the resolution was actually aimed at curbing anti-Russian
demonstrations in Latvia. After garnering the unanimous approval of
the commission’s members, who can appreciate a good crackdown on
free-speech when they see one, the resolution met symbolic
resistance from the U.S. corner. Unwilling to act as the Kremlin’s
stooge, the United States found itself in the awkward position of
voting against a resolution to condemn Nazism. However this may
have weighed on America’s conscience, for the UNHCHR, it was all in
a day’s work.
Seen in this context, Representative Siv’s talk about
undermining UNHCHR’s work does not strike me as especially
convincing. The stark fact is that the world’s preeminent human
rights body has today become an instrument suppressing the very
rights it was designed to safeguard. Regimes that trample human
rights are shielded from reproach, while democracies are singled
out for scorn. And the UNHCHR’s moral collapse is only a part of
the broader, institutional failure of the United Nations. Without
dredging up recent unpleasantness like the Oil for Food fraud, the
unhappy reality is that Sudan’s membership on the UNHCHR dovetails
with the U.N.’s corrupted mission.
Where else but the UNHCHR can a government like Sudan’s,
complicit in the deaths of two million of its citizens since 1983,
be held up as a human rights watchdog? Where else can a Sudanese
government that sponsors roving Arab militias to rape and execute
black African minorities and torch and pillage their villages, lay
claim to concerned humanitarianism? And where else can a terrorist
thug assault the commitment to human rights of its leading
champion, as Sudan’s U.N. ambassador did last week when he equated
the isolated perversity of a couple of American prison guards with
21 years of state-sanctioned murder? If the UNHCHR’s work makes all
this possible, then perhaps undermining it is not such a bad
thing.
Yet the UNHCHR is not entirely useless. With observers
frantically searching for some — any — index to measure
achievable success in Iraq, the UNHCHR may prove the perfect
benchmark. I propose this: If Iraq no longer qualifies for
membership in that despot-ridden commission, it will be safe to
call our efforts a success. Until then, the question is still worth
asking: Why do we need the U.N., again
