View from Geneva

Criticism of the U.N. human Rights Council’s problematic record — where there have been more condemnatory resolutions, special sessions and fact-finding missions against Israel than on the whole world combined — is “propaganda,” UN rights chief Navi Pillay told the Irish Times.

The decision by the Obama administration to reverse a Bush- era boycott of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), despite “propaganda which portrayed the council as biased and a venue for bashing Israel”, was, Pillay says, of great significance.

Key members of the 47-nation body include China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Despite their poor records on human rights, none has ever been condemned by a council resolution, scrutinized by a fact-finding inquiry, or made the object of a special country investigator.

Pillay then praised Ireland’s vote as one of the few EU states to support the Goldstone Report and its lopsided findings favoring Hamas over Israel:

Pillay praises Ireland’s support for a recent UN resolution calling for investigations into allegations that war crimes were committed during the January conflict in Gaza. “I agree with Ireland’s reasoning that the call for investigation is a legitimate call. “If someone robs you on the street, you want an investigation, an identification of the suspect and a prosecution. Where societies have taken that route - my country’s truth and reconciliation commission, for instance - you find that there has been a management of the passions that arise from victims’ calls about injustice.” Pillay stresses the importance of the Goldstone report on the Gaza conflict - which prompted the UN resolution - because it is grounded in international law. “Whatever the justification to go to war is, you cannot use disproportionate violence and you cannot target civilians,” she says.

We at UN Watch will continue to urge the United Nations and its human rights council to return to the founding principles of Eleanor Roosevelt and Rene Cassin, and to call them out when, led by Qaddafi, Castro and Co., they veer off track. People in responsible positions should consider confronting the council’s egregious bias, and getting it to address millions of currently ignored victims, instead of shooting at the messengers.

Has blogger Andrew Sullivan done a 180 on the U.N.’s Orwellian-named Human Rights Council?

Two years ago, Sullivan linked to my speech — the one banned by the council president from ever being uttered again – and rightly recognized how “depraved” the U.N. can get in its pathological obsession with condemning Israel to divert attention from the world’s worst abusers.

Now, though, Sullivan seems to have defected, taking seriously the statements of a body controlled by Havana, Harare and the House of Saud, and attacking UN Watch.

To disparage last week’s compelling UN testimony of British hero and military expert Col. Richard Kemp (the speech now ranked as YouTube’s 25th Top Rated News Video of the week), Sullivan tries to discredit us — the Geneva non-governmental organization that sponsored the officer’s address — as being a “hard Neocon group.”

Sullivan’s inexplicable slur fails even in its intended ad hominem effect given that the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan already made the same remarks on the BBC during the war in January. If Sullivan disagrees with the content, it’s neither here nor there that we invited the British hero to repeat his words before the Goldstone-loving despots in Geneva.

The slur is also nothing shy of incoherent. If we are to believe Andrew Sullivan, UN Watch would become the first “hard neocon” group in history to be chaired by a former Carter Administration official who actively campaigned for Barack Obama’s election to the presidency, to lobby for gay rights, featuring as a leading spokesman the father of Canada’s gay marriage bill, and to actively welcome the U.S. decision to join the UN Human Rights Council.Sullivan has his sources, though: he relies on the universally respected scholarly authority of… anonymous Wikipedia users.

The truth is that UN Watch is completely non-partisan, committed to upholding the noble prinicples of the UN Charter and human rights for all.

It wasn’t so long ago that people who promoted these goals by urging the UN to end its self-injurious Israel-bashing were considered true friends of the United Nations organization. Today, in some quarters, that’s enough to get you tarred a “hard Neocon.”

Geneva insiders report that the UN Human Rights Council is planning to hold a special session on the Goldstone report, next week or the week after.

Recall that the UNHRC decided last week to defer consideration of the report until its next regular scheduled session, in March 2010. There being no current emergency, calling a special session now would be a gross abuse of the procedure, even more egergious than the usual. There have been no special sessions on Iran’s repression of protesters, China’s killing of Muslim Uighurs, etc.

Since its inception in 2006, the council has held 9 special sessions dealing with countries, of which 5 have been devoted to condemning Israel, versus only 4 sessions for the rest of the world combined. An additional two sessions were called on the world food and financial crises, both to point fingers at the West. Continue reading ‘U.N. Rights Council Planning Emergency Session on Goldstone Report’