Meles
Zenawi, Ethiopia’s taciturn, ironfisted ruler, passed away after 21 years of
increasingly autocratic rule, leaving the country and its global allies at an
interesting and rare crossroads: Will the country continue along its current
path of political authoritarianism and its extensive machinery of suppression,
or will we see the rights of Ethiopian people restored in an more transparent,
accountable politicalsystem? Amnesty International
The United States is competing with four Western
countries for three seats on the Human Rights Council in the only contested
election at the U.N.’s top human rights body.
The 193-member General Assembly is scheduled to vote
Monday for 18 members of the 47-member council.
African, Asian, Eastern European and Latin American countries have put forward uncontested slates whose
candidates are virtually certain of victory.
Several human rights groups have criticized a number
of these candidates as unqualified including Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon,
Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Venezuela.
The five Western nations competing for seats — the
U.S., Germany, Greece, Ireland and Sweden — were all deemed qualified by the
rights groups.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based
advocacy group UN Watch, called the absence of competition in four out of the
five regional slates “scandalous.”
He said at the group’s annual luncheon at U.N.
headquarters ahead of the vote, on Friday, that the United States was the last
of the five candidates to enter the race and found that many countries had already
made commitments to the other candidates.
“Most people that I’ve spoken to say America is
polling somewhere either fourth or fifth,” he said. “If they do lose … we think
it will be a setback for the council. We don’t agree with everything America
has done but UN Watch thinks America has been a leader of the few good things
that have occurred.”
Philippe Bolopion, United Nations director for Human
Rights Watch, said that to its credit, the Western group is the only regional
group allowing true competition in Monday’s election.
“As a result, and despite its highly effective
engagement in the Human Rights Council, the U.S. faces a tough yet healthy
competition,” he said.
Bolopion said it was sad that the Africa, Asian,
Eastern European and Latin American groups at the U.N. “have pre-cooked this
election by offering as many candidates as they have been allotted seats.” He
said this is “making a mockery” of the standard set by the General Assembly that all candidates for
the council “uphold the highest standards” of human rights.
The Human Rights Council was created in March 2006 to
replace the U.N.’s widely discredited and highly politicized Human Rights
Commission. But the council has also been widely criticized for failing to
change many of the commission’s practices, including putting much more emphasis
on Israel than on any other country and electing candidates accused of serious
human rights violations.
Former President George W. Bush’s administration
boycotted the council when it was established over its repeated criticism of
Israel and its refusal to cite flagrant rights abuses in Sudan and elsewhere.
But in 2009, then newly elected President Barack Obama sought to join the
council saying the U.S. wanted to help make it more effective.
In that contest, the U.S. was elected on an
uncontested slate winning 167 votes, far more than the 97 vote majority needed.
Amnesty International’s U.N. representative, Jose Luis
Dias, said member states “should return a blank ballot if they feel a candidate
does not meet the high human rights standards expected of council
members.”
Amnesty has written letters to all candidates urging them
to demonstrate their commitment to human rights, he said.
For example, Dias said, the organization has called on
Ethiopia to instruct the security services to remove barriers to the work of
human rights defenders and journalists and has highlighted Ivory Coast’s 2010
Supreme Court ruling upholding a husband’s right to “discipline his wife and
children, provided that this left no visible marks.”
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