Archive for January, 2010

Group: U.N. rights council’s Haiti parley is “harmful diversion”

Published by
UN Watch
- at January 27, 2010 in Human Rights Council (UNHRC). 0 Comments

Today’s urgent meeting of the UN Human Rights Council regarding Haiti is “a harmful waste of the organization’s precious time, resources, and moral capital,” said a human rights watchdog group.”Haiti is certainly a dire emergency, but this council, which is supposed to address human rights violations, has no budget, authority or expertise on humanitarian aid, and is clearly the wrong forum,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based monitoring organization.

According to UN estimates, a day of conference and translation services costs up to $200,000. “Instead of being used for today’s questionable exercise, that money should have gone to Haiti’s needy victims,” said Neuer.

“Unlike other UN bodies, the Human Rights Council has neither the power of the purse nor of the sword, only the power to turn a spotlight on the worst abusers,” said Neuer.

“Tragically, however, the council has refused to hold special sessions to try and stop Iran from massacring student protesters, terrorists from killing civilians in Baghdad and Kabul, or China and Cuba from arresting bloggers, journalists and dissidents. Yet today it convenes — to do exactly what? Condemn the earth for quaking? It’s nonsensical.”

“Dominated by repressive regimes, the council is wasting its time on an issue that involves no violation or perpetrator. It’s a public relations exercise that diverts the Human Rights Council’s attention from examining genuine human rights abuses, and aids member states that want us to believe the council is nevertheless doing something.”

“The council was similarly misused last year with an urgent session on the financial crisis, and the year before that on the rise in food prices. Because it’s inherently the wrong forum, both meetings amounted to futile political exercises that produced nothing but paper.”

“I regret that the United States and the European Union have lent their names as co-sponsors to this equally futile exercise. It only takes the Council further away from its stated mission of protecting individual human rights, and sends the wrong message.”

The EU and other Western countries had previously demanded that all special sessions include a specific description of the human rights violations at issue (see par. 64 at p. 17 here). However, many co-sponsored today’s session despite the absence of any such description or violations.The UN titled the meeting a “Special Session on Support to recovery process in Haiti: A Human Rights approach.”For more information on previous special sessions, see below.

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Background: Previous 12 UN Human Rights Council Special Sessions

From its inception in June 2006, the UN Human Rights Council has held 10 special sessions on countries, of which six were sponsored by Arab states and devoted to the one-sided condemnation of Israel, and four on the rest of the world combined. An additional two sessions were held on food and financial crises, both of which pointed an accusing finger at the West. Following is a summary.

12th special session (October 2009): Condemned Israel for alleged violations (but failed to condemn Hamas), and adopted report of UN Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (“Goldstone Report”).

11th special session (May 2009): Praised Sri Lankan government (ignored killing of 20,000 civilians).

10th special session (February 2009): Financial crisis (blamed the West).

9th special session (January 2009): Condemned Israel for Gaza war (ignored Hamas terrorism).

8th special session (November 2008) DR Congo (failed to reinstate investigator eliminated by council earlier in the year).

7th special session (May 2008) Food crisis (blamed the West).

6th special session (January 2008): Condemned Israel for actions in Gaza (ignored Hamas terrorism).

5th special session (October 2007): Myanmar.

4th special session (December 2006) Darfur (praised Sudan for its “cooperation”).

3rd special session (November 2006): Condemned Israel for errant shell in Beit Hanoun (ignored Hamas terrorism).

2nd special session (August 2006): Condemned Israel for Lebanon war (ignored Hezbollah terrorism).

1st special session (July 2006): Condemned Israel for responding to Gilad Shalit capture (ignored Hamas terrorism).

Why the U.N. Human Rights Council ignores IDF’s life-saving in Haiti

Published by
UN Watch
- at January 25, 2010 in Human Rights Council (UNHRC). 1 Comment

In the video below, the CNN reporter expresses amazement at the extraordinary contribution made by the Israel Defense Forces’ medical team in rescuing and healing Haiti’s earthquake victims. In human rights terms, we call it protecting the right to life and the right to health.

So why is all of this being ignored by the U.N. Human Rights Council and its legions of experts and advisers?

Does it threaten the Islamic-dominated Council’s worldview of Israel as absolutely evil, a nation capable of doing nothing good?

How my email to Goldstone was twisted by his report

Published by
Hillel Neuer
- at January 19, 2010 in Goldstone "Fact Finding" Mission for UNHRC. 0 Comments

Israeli public figures who say their country would have benefited by cooperating with the UN Human Rights Council’s “fact-finding” mission on the Gaza conflict are mistaken.

The raw malice that the Goldstone Report evinces toward Israel, the one party about which the panelists can say nothing good (as opposed to their exuberant, repeated praise for the “resilient” people of Gaza), demonstrates convincingly that the source of the imbalance lay in the UN committee’s mental structure. More information would have meant nothing. In the commissioners’ jaundiced view of the conflict, the Israeli leadership’s guilt for premeditated murder on a mass scale was taken as a philosophical given, a first premise not open to logical challenge. Continue reading ‘How my email to Goldstone was twisted by his report’

UN Committee on Rights of the Child Evaluates Israel

Published by
UN Watch
- at January 19, 2010 in Children's Rights and International Humanitarian Law. 0 Comments

The Committee on the Rights of the Child today evaluated Israel’s record on children’s rights.

Israel’s delegation was headed by Mr. Daniel Taub, the Senior Deputy Legal Advisor of Israel’s Foreign Ministry. It also included Mrs. Simona Halperin, Director of the International Organizations and Human Rights Department at the Foreign Ministry; Mrs. Hila Gilad Tenne, Director of the Department for International Agreements and Litigation of the Ministry of Justice; and Mr. Harel Weinberg, legal advisor of the Ministry of Defense.

The Committee questioned the panel on military recruitment policies, the situation of children in Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan, and on Operation Cast Lead. Committee member Ms. Hadeel Al-Asmar of Syria asked, “Do you actually systematically collect data on the impact on children of armed conflict?” She expressed “regret” and “deep concern” that the report “only provide[s] details on Israeli children, not on the children in the Occupied Palestinian Territories who are so deeply affected by hostilities.”

Israel said that that every day Israeli children are victimized by Hamas rocket attacks that deliberately target civilians. Taub added that the death of any child, Israeli or Palestinian is a tragedy, and that Israel “strives constantly to develop solutions to difficult humanitarian questions.” He emphasized that it is an “unfortunate fact that a large number of youngsters are involved in terrorist activities. The age of suicide-bombers has dropped, and, due to their small size, children are used to build tunnels.”

The Committee consistently interrupted the panel with questions about Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children. The Israeli delegation noted Hamas’s record of protecting child rights, including teaching terrorist ideology, enrolling children in terrorist training camps, and using children as human shields.

The Committee repeatedly questioned the delegation on conscription of minors into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in spite of Halperin’s assertion that “voluntary recruits under the age of eighteen cannot take part in combat duty. Only those trained in combat can take part in combat, and in no way can a person under eighteen be trained in combat.”

Furthermore, in response to the Committee’s allegations that the IDF employed human shields during Operation Cast Lead, the panel emphasized that “all IDF personnel receive training in human rights and international humanitarian law and are expressly prohibited from using civilians as human shields or directly involving them in operations in any way.”

Though the Committee members were charged only with evaluating Israel’s record of protecting and promoting children’s rights, commitee member Rosa Maria Ortiz of Paraguay asked, “If this is true, that all IDF soldiers receive human rights training, how do you explain your actions in Operation Cast Lead?”

Taub replied that Israel seeks constantly to find solutions to the toughest humanitarian questions, that it aims to protect civilian life at almost any cost, and that, most of all, it strives for peace in the region, so that children today, and in the future, no longer have to fear for their lives.

Then: Guardian Newspaper Slammed ‘Richard-Richard’ Goldstone Inquiry as ‘Rubbish Bin’

Published by
Hillel Neuer
- at January 10, 2010 in Goldstone "Fact Finding" Mission for UNHRC and Human Rights Council (UNHRC). 1 Comment

That the U.N.’s Goldstone Report on alleged war crimes in Gaza is a travesty of justice is apparent from its skewed contents, method, and conclusions, as well as its tainted political framwework, one-sided mandate, and prejudiced mission members. Continue reading ‘Then: Guardian Newspaper Slammed ‘Richard-Richard’ Goldstone Inquiry as ‘Rubbish Bin’’