Geneva, December 31, 2009 – UN Watch, the Geneva-based watchdog organization, today called on UN chief Ban Ki-Moon to remove Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Council’s permanent investigator of alleged Israeli violations, for breaching his mandate when he called this week for world sanctions against Israel and compared Israelis to Nazis. The full letter follows below. Continue reading ‘UN Watch Calls on UN to Remove Richard Falk for Breaching Mandate’
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Archive for December, 2009
The UN’s permanent investigator of alleged Israeli human rights violations said this week that “desperation created in Gaza as a result of [Israel's] blockade” is something “that no people since the end of World War II have experienced in such a severe and continuing form,” and he called for economic sanctions against Israel, a demand that is entirely beyond his UN mandate and a measure which no other UN investigator recommends for any other country.
Richard Falk’s thinly veiled comparison of the Jewish state with Nazi Germany would not be his first. In 2007, Falk accused Israel of planning a “Holocaust” against the Palestinians.
Falk is also a major American supporter of the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was an inside job.
Soon, on January 12, 2010, we will mark the one-year anniversary of the UNHRC special session and resolution that commissioned the Goldstone Report. It’s a time to remember who orchestrated the “fact-finding” exercise.
The 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which effectively controls the UNHRC, is being far more honest about this than Goldstone. Here’s what OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu revealed to Al Jazeera in October: Continue reading ‘Islamic states reveal: “We created the Goldstone Report”’
A closely intertwined network of organizations and individuals has been leading the U.S. lobby for the UN’s Goldstone Report, the poorly written and egregiously one-sided document that overtly proclaims, Goldstone’s protestations notwithstanding, that any self-defence by the Israel Defence Forces is an exercise in “futility” (see par. 1914).
The lobbyists all seem to have one thing in common: they are all funded by, or connected to, financier George Soros. Speculation by some bloggers in November can now be confirmed in greater detail. Continue reading ‘The Soros Connection: Leading the Goldstone Lobby’
“The UN Human Rights Council must assume its responsibilities”
Geneva, Dec. 22, 2009 – Fifty human rights groups from around the world today united in calling on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay to reinstate the mandate for a human rights monitor in Congo, saying the position should never have been eliminated by the UN Human Rights Council in March 2008. Continue reading ’50 Rights Groups Urge UN to Reinstate Congo Monitor’
U.S. Urged to Reject HRC Resolutions in Today’s General Assembly Vote
NEW YORK, December 10 - As the UN General Assembly was set today to approve the Human Rights Council’s past year of resolutions, a Geneva-based human rights watchdog called on the U.S. and other democracies to vote in opposition, and claimed in a report that 18 of its key resolutions were contrary to basic human rights principles. Click here for 2009 UNHRC Key Actions chart.
“Paradoxically, as our report today shows, the U.N.’s main human rights body has turned into the world’s leading sponsor of impunity for gross human rights abuses worldwide,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. Continue reading ‘Rights Group: New Report Shows UN Rights Council Shielding Worst Abusers, “Foxes Guarding the Chickens”’
On December 7, North Korea underwent the Universal Period Review (UPR), a process which involves a review of the human rights records of all 192 UN Member States once every four years. North Korea has become a country of special interest for the UPR process because of several reports submitted to the UN concerning the country’s grave human rights violations, including torture, forced labor camps, public execution, and violence against children and women.
During the three hour review process, North Korea denied the existence of all human rights violations, despite Western state concerns of North Korea’s current human rights situation. North Korea claimed the concerns were the result of bias and “unfair resolutions” regarding their country, which are discussed every year at the Human Rights Council. Several delegations spoke in support of the North Korean government. Continue reading ‘North Korea defiant amid harsh UN criticism’
GENEVA, December 2, 2009 – Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch welcomed Congressional testimony delivered yesterday (see selected portions below) by the Obama Administration’s nominee as next U.S. ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, in which she denounced the 47-nation body for its “bias” and being “fixated on Israel,” and pledged to eliminate the council’s controversial standing agenda item on Israel, saying this would be a “priority” of the Obama Administration.
“Israel is the only country that has a standing item on the agenda at the council. That’s a problem. We will work to get rid of that,” said Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe yesterday, in testimony before a Senate hearing. She criticized the council’s general focus on Israel to the exclusion of most other countries. “It is a bias. It’s unbalanced, and that is a priority of this administration going forward to work to get rid of that bias.”
Dr. Donahoe spoke of “changing the agenda, putting the most egregious human rights violators on the agenda and changing the focus of the council to the real abusers. And that will be the number one goal.” Continue reading ‘U.S. nominee to UN rights council pledges to eliminate anti-Israel agenda item, refocus on “real abusers”’
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