Unsurprisingly, a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) report has once
again slammed Israel’s acts of self-defense. The recently released report
ostensibly investigating the events that surrounded the interception of the
Gaza-bound
Mavi Marmara in May is a modern blood-libel, and another nail in the
coffin of the council’s credibility. The full report is scheduled to be
officially presented to the council on Monday.
While its name would seem
to indicate a worthy body, the UNHRC has two sole functions: to defend serial
human-rights abusing nations from reproach, and to revile and attack
Israel.
The UNHRC, created in 2006, is the successor to the thoroughly
discredited United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). When the mandate
for the new council was debated, certain basic reforms and standards were
proposed to ensure the commission’s failures were not repeated. Unfortunately,
few of the reforms received substantial support in the UN General Assembly,
which refused to adopt them.
Those that were adopted have been
abused.
The General Assembly resolution that created the council merely
required member states to “take into account” a candidate’s human-rights record
when applying to the UNHRC. Not even a nation under sanction from the UN
Security Council for human-rights abuses need refrain from seeking
election.
During the application process, candidate nations make pledges
of adherence to human rights standards by way of justifying their candidacy.
These statements have been described as Kafkaesque in their deviance from
reality and historical record. One glaring example is that of Saudi Arabia,
which claimed a “confirmed commitment to the defense, protection and promotion
of human rights.”
The reality of course, is very different.
The US
State Department’s annual human rights reports consistently criticize Saudi
Arabia for its serious human rights failings, including arbitrary arrest,
discrimination against women, restriction of worker rights and lack of religious
freedom.
However, Saudi Arabia is hardly alone, as only 20 of the 47
nations on the UNHRC are considered “free” by Freedom House, an independent NGO
which monitors human rights and political freedoms. This means the majority of
nations currently represented on the UNHRC do not allow basic freedoms for their
own people, let alone concern themselves with global human
rights.
Another example of this farce was the recent election of Libya to
the UNHRC.
Libya received support from 155 of the General Assembly’s 192
member states in a secret ballot, angering a coalition of 37 human rights
organizations which described Libya as one of the most repressive societies in
the world.
ONE OF the root problems is the influence of the Organization
of Islamic Conference (OIC) within the UNHRC.
The UNHRC heavily weights
membership on its council to nations from Africa and Asia – two continents where
the OIC has considerable influence. The OIC controls the lion’s share of the
world’s energy resources, including oil, gas and uranium.
The OIC and its
allies have an automatic majority on the UNHRC, and this is represented in the
council’s workload.
Human Rights Watch claims that the OIC has “fought
doggedly” and successfully within the UN Human Rights Council to shield states
from criticism, except when it comes to criticism of Israel. The OIC’s mantra
has been that the council should work cooperatively with abusive governments
rather than condemn them.
This has led to the absurd situation in which
Israel is condemned 33 times by the UNHRC out of a total of 40 countryspecific
condemnations, while the UNHRC expresses only “deep concern” over Sudan and
praises its cooperation.
In addition, the UNHRC adopted a unique decision
to discuss human rights violations committed by Israel in all of the council’s
meetings. It has also been criticized for redirecting attention to the fate of
Muslim minorities within non- Muslim countries, but diverting attention from the
treatment of ethnic minorities in Muslim-majority countries, such as the
oppression of the Kurds in Syria, the Ahwaz in Iran, the Al-Akhdam in Yemen or
the Berbers in Algeria.
Furthermore, the OIC has been at the forefront of
silencing freedom of expression.
An amendment to the duties of the
special rapporteur on freedom of expression, passed by the Human Rights Council
on March 28, 2008, has acted against this very freedom. The OIC and its allies
have sought to ban anything they deem as criticism of Islam. Some nations were
outraged by this amendment, which they claimed “turns the special rapporteur’s
mandate on its head.”
Nevertheless, it is on the subject of Israel that
the OIC appears to have unique influence. When the UNHRC discussed issues
relating to the Second Lebanon War in 2006, four of the council’s independent
experts reported the findings of their visit to Lebanon and Israel. State after
state from the OIC took the floor to denounce the experts for daring to look
beyond Israeli violations to discuss Hizbullah’s as well.
This sent a
very clear message that experts filing reports for the UNHRC involving Israel
should never look at the conduct of any other party. Justice Richard Goldstone
understood this very well, as was reflected in the report he gave the UNHRC. In
an interview given to Al Jazeera in 2009, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu,
secretary-general of the OIC, explained how his organization not only initiated,
but drove the Goldstone process from start to finish.
THE PANEL of
experts compiling the report on events surrounding the flotilla has clearly
understood its mandate well. Once again, a report has singularly blamed an event
almost solely on Israel while refusing to assign responsibility or even suitably
investigate any other actor. What makes the report so absurd is the recent
release of many first-hand accounts by people on the Mavi Marmara.
These
accounts, written by some hostile to Israel in the first place, depict very
different scenes to those described in the report.
In his recently
released book, Turkish journalist Sefik Dinç, while sympathetic to the militant
IHH, writes that the crisis was “calculated” by those on board, and reportedly
describes how the IDF soldiers did not open fire until after other soldiers were
taken hostage. Dinç describes in his book, with the aid of photographs, how
preparations for confronting the Israelis on the Mavi Marmara were “not going to
be that passive.”
Our internal investigations indicate that not only did
the soldiers only open fire when their lives were threatened, but that the first
shots were fired by those on the boat; there are reports that one soldier
suffered a knee injury from a non-IDF weapon as soon as he came on
board.
This biased, libelous report indicates that the OIC has once again
achieved its aim of condemning Israel through its proxies in the UNHRC. One
again, it has proven UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and former high
commissioner for human rights Mary Robinson’s criticisms that the council acts
according to political considerations as opposed to human rights. In fact, the
report stands as an affront to the secretary- general’s own panel of inquiry,
with which Israel is fully cooperating.
General Assembly President Joseph
Deisss warned recently against the marginalization of the UN itself by stating
the need for urgent reforms, like reviewing the UNHRC. At stake is the plight of
millions of victims of human-rights violations around the world.
It is
high time for democracies to reassess their participation in a council that
places political calculations over the protection of human rights while
providing cover to some of the world’s most brutal regimes.
We must give
a voice to the oppressed, justice to the abused and equity for all of humanity.
None of this will be achieved by always attacking and condemning Israel while
allowing totalitarian nations to hijack the international human-rights
agenda.
The writer is the deputy foreign minister.