Anti-Zionism at the United Nations Human Rights Council by David Matas (Remarks prepared for delivery to the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, Faculty of Law, Yale University, 14 October 2010)
The newly created United Nations Human Rights Council has obvious problems. Since its inception in 2006, the Council has had two agenda items dealing with country human rights violations, one for Israel, the other for the rest of the world.
The Council has a special mechanism dedicated to Israel, "the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967". This is its only mechanism which the Council has decided to continue indefinitely.
When assessing the behaviour of the governments of other countries, experts the Council mandates to report on human rights violations go about their business professionally. However, for Israel, the routine is different. Whatever Israel does to defend itself is, for the most part, de-contextualized, and condemned as gratuitous,
spontaneous acts of violence against innocents1.
The Council has had thirteen special sessions since its inception. Six were focused on condemnation of Israel and seven were directed to all other thematic issues and
countries2. No two other sessions had a common country or theme.
The Council, as of March 2010, passed twenty seven out of thirty three country resolutions condemning Israel, more than 80%3. Besides Israel, only Burma and
1 David Matas. "Corruption of International Institutions" in Aftershock:
Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism,Dundurn Press: 2005. 2 See
North Korea were criticised in resolutions for their human rights records.
The Council replaced the United Nations Human Rights Commission, one of the original United Nations organs. The General Assembly, in the resolution creating the Council, recognized "the importance of ensuring universality, objectivity and non-selectivity in the consideration of human rights issues, and the elimination of double standards
and politicization,"4 The prime suspect in the charge of politicization was the obsession with Israel.
The Commission like the Council after it had two agenda items dealing with country human rights violations, one for Israel and the other for the rest of the world. Human rights experts for the Commission, like the Council, produced all too often misleading reports about Israel. For years, one third of the time and the resolutions of the Human Rights Commission were devoted to Israel alone.
The Council though has been worse than the Commission. The Economic and Social Council gave the Commission authority to convoke special sessions in a 1990 resolution. In the sixteen years which followed there were five special sessions, one on Israel. So in the four years of the Council there have been more special sessions on Israel than there were for all countries and topics in the sixteen years the Commission had authority to convoke special sessions.
When the Commission began its work after World War II, its focused on standards only and did nothing about countries. The first country target of its attention was Chile,
Australian, October 4, 2010. 4 UN Document number A/RES/60/251, 3 April 2006.
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after the Pinochet coup. The Commission country focus expanded next to South Africa
and third to Israel5.
Putting Israel number three was already a worrying sign. Nonetheless the attention to Israel, however, unwarranted, was, at least diluted over time by attention to other countries.
With the shift from the Commission to the Council, initially, the attention given by the specialized mechanisms to individual countries was carried forward. However, slowly these mechanisms are disappearing, leaving Israel ever more isolated.
When the Council met in June 2007, the mandate of the Special Rapporteurs on Belarus and Cuba were discontinued. There was no noticeable improvement in the human rights record of either which justified the discontinuation.
The old Commission considered in confidence consistent patterns of gross violations of human rights occurring in any part of the world. The consideration was named the 1503 procedure after the number of the Economic and Social Council resolution of 27 May 1970 which had created it. The new Council carried forward this procedure.
The president of the Human Rights Council announced on March 26, 2007 that the Council had decided to discontinue consideration under that procedure of both Uzbekistan and Iran. Again here there was no improvement in the human rights situation of either country before the decisions to discontinue.
In December 2007, the Council ended the mandate of its Group of Experts on the human rights situation in Darfur. This was done while the genocide in Darfur continued.
5 David Matas "No More: The Battle Against Human Rights Violations" Dundurn,
1994, Chapter 15.
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In March 2008, the Council decided to end the mandate of the independent expert on the Democratic Republic of Congo despite the awful human rights situation there.
With the Commission, Israel was the world's worst human rights violator. With the Council, Israel has become virtually the only human rights violator.
Defenders of the new Council point to the universal periodic review. The Council reviews the human rights record of all countries in the UN at pace sixteen countries a session. The review started with the first session of 2008. The Council has three sessions a year. The cycle will be complete over a period of four years, covering 192 countries6.
The review is conducted by the Council itself, in a working group composed of all member states of the Council7. Observer states, that is to say everybody other state, can participate in the review8. The duration of the review for each country in the working group is three hours9.
The review is an interactive dialogue10. During those three hours, the subject of the review responds to interventions. Given the time allowed for this response, if the chairs limit state interventions to two minutes, which has become a common practice, 60 state interventions at maximum can fit within the three hours.
It did not take long before gross violators states figured out how to game the system.
6 UN Human Rights Council Resolution 5/1, June 18, 2007 paragraph 14. 7 Resolution 5/1 paragraph 18(a). 8 Paragraph 18(b). 9 Paragraph 22 10 Paragraph 21
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They lined up their friends or those they could bully to register to speak during the two hours, chewing up the time with praise or even justifications for the violations. Since the pool of potential speaker states is the full UN membership and not just the Council membership, the three hours can become quickly consumed with organized filibustering.
The very label "review" is misleading. Unlike an expert mechanism report, the review produces no evaluation or assessment of the human rights record of the state under scrutiny, no overall recommendations, observations or statements of concern. All that happens during the course of the review is that other states may make recommendations to the state subject of the review. The state under review decides on its own which recommendations to adopt. The remaining recommendations are just
noted11.
The universal periodic review, on its own, is better than nothing. However, in context, it has been positively harmful because it has become an excuse for the abandonment of country specific procedures. Countries like Iran or Cuba say that there is no need to have the mechanisms focus on them because they come up for scrutiny in the universal periodic review. This logic, sadly, has seemed to work for virtually every country subject of a special mechanism except Israel.
One form of discrimination is selective prosecution. When blacks are prosecuted for murder but not whites, it is no answer to a charge of discrimination that this or that black accused was in fact guilty.
Whatever one thinks of the charges of human rights abuses made against Israel, only a person divorced from reality could attempt to justify the disproportionate attention it
11 Paragraph 32
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gets at the UN Human Rights Council. How has the Human Rights Council gone so badly off track? Why is this happening?
The start of the answer is one simple fact. The Council is controlled by the Organization of The Islamic Conference (OIC) states. I do not mean to suggest by this statement that the Conference pulls the strings behind the scenes or that it manipulates in some way the members of the Council. The control is a lot more direct than that. Because of the zany voting structure of the Council, the Conference states control now and have controlled since its inception the majority of votes.
The membership of the Council is 47 states. The geographic distribution is Africa 13; Asia 13; Eastern Europe 6; Latin American and the Caribbean 8; and Western Europe and Others Group 7.
The OIC, after the first election in 2006, had 16 members on the Council, with a majority in the Asian region and the African regions (Asia seven and Africa nine). Those two regions together, counting 26 states, have a majority in the Council. Therefore the OIC controlled the Council once there was regional bloc voting.
The story was the same after the 2007 elections. Fourteen seats on the Council came up for election in 2007. After those elections, the Council had seven OIC states in the Africa region. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia left; Egypt joined. Since, in total, the Africa bloc is 13, the OIC still had a majority in the Africa bloc.
In Asia, the terms of Indonesia and Bahrain expired. Indonesia was re-elected and Qatar joined. So the OIC membership and majority in the Asian bloc remained the same. Accordingly, the OIC controlled the 2007 Council as it did the original Council.
2008 continued this story. In May 2008, the terms of four Council members in the Africa region expired, two of whom were OIC member states - Gabon and Mali. Gabon
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was re-elected. Mali was replaced by another OIC member state, Burkina Faso.
In Asia, matters got worse. In Asia also in 2008, the terms of four Council members expired. Only one was an OIC member state, Pakistan. Pakistan was re-elected. Also elected to an Asian slot was OIC member state Bahrain, adding to the Asian OIC majority. Accordingly, the OIC continues to control the Council.
2009 was a remarkable year because the OIC managed to keep control of the Council even though the terms of eight OIC states became due. In 2009, the terms of four OIC members in the African bloc expired - Djibouti, Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal. All four got re-elected. The terms also of four OIC members in the Asian bloc expired - Bangladesh, Jordan, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. Bangladesh, Jordan and Saudi Arabia got re-elected. Malaysia did not but was replaced by the Kyrgyz Republic to keep the OIC numbers intact.
In 2010, matters went from bad to worse. In the Africa region, the OIC membership went up, solidifying OIC control of the bloc. The term of Egypt expired. Libya and Mauritania from the OIC joined moving the OIC majority in the bloc to 8 out of 13.
The story repeated itself in the Asian bloc. From the OIC, the terms of Indonesia and Qatar expired. Qatar was re-elected. Also elected from the OIC were Malaysia and Maldive, moving the OIC majority in the Asian bloc to 9 out of 13.
After five years and five elections, the Human Rights Council has maintained at least one constant, OIC control. What we see the Human Rights Council is not the reflection of the wishes of the nations of the earth, but rather the reflection of the wishes of the subset, of those state members of the Organization of The Islamic Conference. The Human Rights Council sees the world through the eyes of the OIC.
There are many more Christians than Moslems on this planet, 2 billion compared to 1.5
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billion. But there is no Organization of The Christian Conference states. And even if there were, despite the greater Christian numbers, the odd way the Council is constructed would still mean that the Organization of The Islamic Conference states would hold sway.
Imagine how the Council would look, what it would do, if there were 57 Jewish states, and those Jewish states controlled the Council. The result is, admittedly, difficult to imagine. But of one thing we could sure. Such a Council would behave very differently from the present Council.
The Organization of The Islamic Conference states is not, like some inter-governmental organization, just a meeting facilitator. It is an organization with a whole host of positions, not least on Israel.
The Charter of the Organization has these provisions: "We the Member States of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, determined: to support the struggle of the Palestinian people, who are presently under foreign occupation, and to empower them to attain their inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination, and to establish their sovereign state with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, while safeguarding its historic and Islamic character, and the holy places therein;"
"Objectives and Principles Article 1 The objectives of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference shall be: 8. To support and empower the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self determination and establish their sovereign State with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, while safeguarding its historic and Islamic character as well as
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the Holy places therein;"
The Charter of the OIC allocates one post of Assistant Secretary General "to the cause of Al-Quds Al-Sharif and Palestine with the understanding that the State of Palestine
shall designate its candidate."12 Al-Quds Al-Sharif is the Arabic name for Jerusalem. This is the only Assistant Secretary General dedicated to a specific cause. Once the OIC controls the Human Rights Council, these elements of the Charter of the OIC become the position of the Council.
Israel is a tiny country and the Jewish people, for whom the existence of the State of Israel is the expression of their right to self-determination, is a tiny population. Out of a global population of now more than 6.6 billion, the Jewish population world-wide does not even reach thirteen million, a mere .02 percent.
The OIC does not consider itself a friend of Israel. That much is clear. But why the fixation? One could understand one resolution critical of Israel every now and then. But why make condemnation of Israel practically the exclusive country work of the Council? The answer is anti-Zionism.
Human rights criticism directed to other countries is meant to remove human rights violations. Not so with Israel. Here the point is delegitimization, a contribution to the destruction of the State of Israel through diplomatic means.
The last thing those opposed to the existence of a Jewish state want is a better functioning Jewish state. They certainly do not want to improve the human rights record of Israel. Rather, like the antisemites of old who believed that Jews were so inherently evil they had no right to exist, anti-Zionists want to show that the Jewish
12 Article 18(1)
10 state is so inherently evil that it has no right to exist.
This animus explains not only the phoney standards and the distorted facts constantly manufactured to condemn Israel, (something about which I have written a whole
book)13. It also explains the unending UN anti-Israel drum beat.
When Israel comes across at the UN Human Rights Council as virtually the only human rights violator, the result is not accident; it is design. And the design, rather than serving a human rights purpose, serves a human rights violating purpose, denial to the Jewish people of the right to self determination.
Not every OIC state is anti-Zionist, but the OIC defers to anti-Zionists. Standing up for the right to self-determination of the Jewish people is not a priority for any OIC state. At the OIC, anti-Zionists sit in the driver's seat. The result is that the Conference presents an automatic anti-Zionist voting bloc. The combination of an anti-Zionist-driven OIC and regional bloc voting has turned what is called a Human Rights Council into an anti-Zionist Council.
We can see, in looking at the anti-Israel votes at the Council that the states lining up against Israel are not just OIC states. How does one explain the other votes? For some states, the answer is immunity.
Though the OIC has enough votes to ram its agenda through the Council without bothering to marshall support outside the blocs it controls, the OIC uses its control of the Council to build general support for its favoured positions. Human rights violating states have exploited its anti-Zionist majority for their own ends.
13 Aftershock: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism, Dundurn Press, 2005.
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Violators came to realize that they could avoid accountability by promising the OIC to vote against Israel in exchange for the OIC's support for diverting first Commission and then Council attention away from their own violations. Anti-Zionism became the weapon of choice for real violators to shield themselves against criticism.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the old Commission a club in which countries gained membership "not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves from criticism or to criticise others." That is a charge which can be levelled against the new Council with even greater force.
Anti-Zionism did not cause grave human right violations perpetrated by member states. But it has helped those states hornswoggle their way into the Council and join the chorus of mischief makers once they get there. Anti-Zionism has become the tactic of choice to prevent states being held to account for their violations.
In some states, Parliamentarians are immune from prosecution. This immunity leads gangsters, organized crime, known criminals to seek election to these Parliaments as a way of escaping justice. Something similar has happened with the UN Human Rights Council. The Council has attracted to their membership gross human rights violating states who wanted to join to get immunity for themselves. And their vehicle of immunity is anti-Zionism.
Cuba was elected to the Human Rights Council at the very beginning, in 2006. The very election of Cuba was a disgrace, not just because of their human rights record, but because of their election efforts.
I was present at the final session of the Commission as well as at the first two sessions of the Council as a delegate of B'nai Brith International. According to what country delegates to the last session of the Commission told me, Cuba went from state to state
12 promising to vote how the state wanted, offering to say what the state wanted, provided only that the state voted for Cuban membership on the Council.
Cuba did get elected and, at the first session of the Council, on the agenda item dealing with substantive human rights violations, devoted its whole speech to denouncing Israel with the standard ant-Zionist cliches. The Cubans were so preoccupied with Israel they could not find even one word for the behaviour of the United States, usually a favourite Cuban whipping boy.
What was going on here was payback. Cuba had traded its way onto the Council with the 57 states and votes of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. For the Organization of the Islamic Conference, what mattered was anti-Zionism.
Cuban anti-Zionism did not end there. Whenever at the Council there was a vote to be cast or a speech to be made beating up on the Jewish state, Cuba was ready, willing and able. Cuba, in principle, has no obvious domestic or geopolitical interest in what happens in the Middle East. The country is thousands of miles away from Israel. It does not have a significant Muslim or Arab population. Yet, at the UN, it has been a lead critic of the Jewish state. Cuban behaviour has provided an insight into the dynamics of infanticide of the new born Council, the effect that anti-Zionism is having in undermining global institutional structures supporting human rights.
On June 18, 2007, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted, as I previously noted, to drop the special procedure on Cuba which the old Human Rights Commission had established as long ago as 1992. Though no reasons were given for this decision, it was certainly not the improvement in the human rights situation in Cuba. I venture to suggest that the primary reason for many members of the Council was the strident anti-Zionism Cuba had manifested.
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If one considers the votes against Israel at the Council, it is not just OIC and gross violator states outside the OIC. There are often democratic rights respecting states joining in the anti-Zionist chorus. Why is this so?
There are venal explanations for this phenomenon. Democratic and non-democratic states alike swap votes. States offer to vote on issues which matter little to them the way other states would like in order to get the votes of these other states on issues that matter a lot to the offering states.
The OIC, with its 57 votes to offer, is a tempting vote swap partner. Even though the governments of democratic states may in the abstract be opposed to anti-Zionism, combating it is often low on their list of priorities.
States trade off votes against economic interests. Several anti-Zionist states have oil and do not hesitate to use it to pursue their agendas.
Anti-Zionism is not quarantined to the Middle East. Many in democratic countries have caught the virus. The Holocaust took place in countries which today are, for the most part, democratic. The antisemitism which generated the Holocaust lingers in these countries in mutant form.
There are other explanations which are more principled. One is the search for consensus. The very suggestion that consensus can be harmful may seem strange, contrary to standard diplomatic attitudes. Normal diplomatic practice is to embrace agreement, not avoid it.
Yet, the search for consensus plays into the hands of the anti-Zionist states. Anti-Zionists present a whole sequence of wildly exaggerated anti-Israel resolutions.
They then offer to mitigate their criticism in exchange for support. All too many
14 rights-promoting states fall dupe to this game. That is a primary reason why we see the remarkable spectacle of so many anti-Israel resolutions passing almost unopposed.
To take an example, the Human Rights Council in January 2009, at one of its many special sessions directed against Israel, passed a typical Israel-bashing resolution, this time about Gaza. The vote was 33 in favour, 13 abstentions, and only one opposed (Canada). The vote was the result of negotiations and text changes which led some states to back off outright opposition. The focus of several states voting in favour and abstaining was the content of the resolution rather than the singling out of Israel.
Many states take the point of view that, as long as they can mitigate a worse resolution and live with the changed language of the resolution in front of them, they will support it or, at the very least, abstain. They fail to have regard to the effect that a accumulation of such resolutions can have on the reputation and effectiveness of the UN.
Anti-Zionist resolutions can not be viewed in isolation. They need to be seen as a cumulative whole. Even if, in isolation, one resolution with less harsh language passed by consensus is better than a resolution with draconian language passed by a slim majority, the cumulation of such resolutions silences advocates of the proper use of the UN human rights system, makes them complicit in its abuse. For the UN to re-establish its credibility there must be no room for compromise in opposing anti-Zionist resolutions.
Some democratic rights respecting states feel the need to set an example. These states are quite happy to blow their own human rights violations and those of their friends out of all proportion in the hope that the demonstrated willingness to accept responsibility for minor flaws will inspire gross violating states to admit their culpability for much more serious misbehaviour.
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There are at the Human Rights Council, outside of Israel, no democratic states which are the object of targeted resolutions, special sessions and special rapporteurs. Democratic states nonetheless criticise each other in the universal periodic review with gusto, something the non-democratic states do not do. Democratic states offer standing invitations to the special mechanisms to come visit, observe, inspect and report, again something the non-democratic states avoid. Democratic states sign and ratify not just the international human rights treaties but as well the optional petition mechanisms, a behaviour from which non-democratic states abstain. (A petition mechanism gives individuals the power to petition to an expert committee established under the treaty that a state party to the treaty has violated their rights.)
This is perverse, naive, dysfunctional behaviour. Yet it persists. It creates the odd result which we now see where rights respecting states are subject to severe criticism even self criticism, but gross violating states are immune.
The perversity is particularly jarring at the universal periodic review where the only states praised without reservation for their human rights records are the gross violating states, praised by other gross violators. But the perversity infuses the UN system. The criticism democratic states heap on Israel is one glaring facet of it.
Even from the point of view of principle, this behaviour does not make sense. The UN Human Rights Council should not be busying itself with all human rights violations everywhere. It should focus its attention on those countries without internal self corrective mechanisms. General international human rights mechanisms should focus on human rights violations which rise to the level of international concern.
Using this standard, Israel should not be addressed by the Council, not at all, not ever, not even once. Israel has a democratically elected parliament, a free press, and an independent judiciary. Whatever human rights violations are inflicted in Israel, or by Israeli government or non state agents, the institutions of Israel are perfectly capable
16 of addressing them. International resources should be husbanded and directed to those countries where the victims have nowhere to go but outside.
It is impossible to contain human rights violations. Human rights violations are a spreading stain. Anti-Zionism is a problem which deserves the attention of rights respecting people everywhere.
But should we be worrying about the malfunctioning of the UN Human Rights Council? Are our efforts not better spent just combatting anti-Zionism directly? While I obviously would not say no to combatting anti-Zionism directly, I also do not think we can afford to ignore the malfunction of the mechanism which has become a global vehicle for the delivery of anti-Zionism.
Promoting human rights involves both positive and negative work. The positive work involves stating standards, applying them to the facts of the case, and invoking mechanism to make the applications effective.
Human rights abusers defend at every stage. Human rights abusers do not just contest the facts. They distort the principles and attempt to manipulate the mechanisms.
Promoting human rights work then does not just mean getting things right. It also means combating those who would get things wrong, those who would misstate the standards, misapply the principles and distort the mechanisms.
In a democracy with a free speech and an independent judiciary, human rights advocates have the upper hand. When standards are misstated or facts misrepresented, the truth will out. Mechanisms have in built defences against manipulation, the independence of the judiciary one against many.
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In non-democratic states with censorship and a judiciary subject to political control, the matter is different. The very denial of democracy, the existence of censorship, the political control of the judiciary are themselves human rights violations. They in turn make possible a much broader assault on human rights. Standards can be misstated without correction. Facts can be distorted with impunity. Mechanisms can be manipulated with ease.
These distortions form a hierarchy. Abused mechanisms almost inevitably lead to misstated standards and misapplied principles. There is a strong connection between misstated standards and their misapplication.
It is, of course, possible to misapply standards which are stated correctly and which emanate from impeccably functioning mechanisms. However, this sort of misapplication is far less systematic than the misleading pictures which flow from rotten mechanisms and mistaken standards.
At the pinnacle of the hierarchy of distortions is then the mechanisms. A crooked man walks a crooked mile. Unfair trials produce unjust verdicts. Fraudulent elections lead to bad governments.
Poor results are not just the regrettable consequence of poor institutions. Institutions are perverted in order to produce twisted results. The means create the end. If we want the right end, we should pay some attention to getting the rights means, in this case, a properly functioning Human Rights Council.
The UN Human Rights Council may seem divorced from the everyday life of most people. While in theory one can talk about the importance of mechanisms, what is the importance of this particular mechanism? Is the Council just so much hot air we can
18 easily afford to ignore? I would suggest not.
There is a link between accountability for human rights violations and ending human rights violations. Violations of human rights are indefensible. When states are held firmly and unequivocally to account for their violations, they back off and lessen the suffering.
Every minute in the Council spent on Israel is a minute not spent on real human rights violators. Anti-Zionism has prolonged the suffering of victims of human rights violations everywhere.
Victims of human rights violations likely do not realize that anti-Zionism was partly responsible for their victimization. Yet, the workings of the UN Human Rights Commission showed that it was.
It is natural for the Jewish community to focus on antisemitism. However, if the scope of anti-Zionism were commensurate with the size of Israel, the matter would have little general interest. The use of anti-Zionism by human rights violators to shield themselves means that all victim communities, all those concerned with the promotion of human rights, have to combat anti-Zionism simply in order to have the UN pay attention to real human rights violations.
Altogether apart from the value a Council focus on real human rights violations would have for the victims, the Council distortions spread outwards. For instance, much has been written, including a lot I have written myself14, about the skewed mandate, the deformed standards, the looseness with facts of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, chaired by Richard Goldstone. Yet, if one looks at its mandating source, the UN Human Rights Council, how could it have been anything different? A
14 See "The Goldstone Report: Stone or Gold?" posted at
19 poisoned tree produces poisoned fruit.
Anti-Zionists operate in a variety of arenas. They attempt private prosecutions of Israeli political and military figures using the doctrine of universal jurisdiction. These attempts have gained some traction in the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain.
They organize academic and professional boycotts of Jewish Israelis and merchandise boycotts of goods coming from the Jewish state. They intimidate and harass Jewish students at universities through anti-Zionist weeks, which they label anti-apartheid weeks. They file complaints with local human rights mechanisms complaining that efforts to combat anti-Zionism thwart their human rights.
All of these other activities would no doubt continue no matter what the UN Human Rights Council did. Yet, the anti-Zionist focus of the Council helps every one of them.
Most people are not aware of anti-Zionist institutional bias of the Council. Anti-Zionist references to UN Human Rights Council resolutions, reports and findings, like the rest of anti-Zionist propaganda, is decontextualized, camouflaged, made to seem something different from what it in fact is. The UN has to many an aura of authority, even morality. Anti-Zionists trade on the ignorance of what the UN Human Rights Council in fact is to advance their delegitimization agenda.
One element of incitement to hatred and war against the Jewish state is the resolutions, reports, recommendations and findings of the UN Human Rights Council. If we want to combat the propaganda, we should be combatting the corruption of the UN.
The Council comes up for review in 2011. The 2006 General Assembly resolution creating the Council mandated a review five years after its inception.
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I have elsewhere made a number of suggestions for specific changes15. There is not time to get into them here. In any case, the reader may well ask, why even try?
Seeing that the Council is a problem is easy. Solving the problem, making the Council work, is not so easy. The attempt to reform the Commission by replacing it with the Council made matters worse. There are those argue that an attempt to reform the Council could produce the same result, creating a reformed Council worse than the present Council. Asking foxes to build a better henhouse is a poor way to protect the hens.
My own view is that reform of the Council is so important we have to try. The UN human rights standards and mechanisms are a legacy of the Holocaust. We owe it to the victims of the Holocaust not to abandon that legacy.
Moreover, the very effort of reform has value. Reform advocacy is a platform for discrediting the anti-Zionism of the current Council. By failing to seek a solution, we turn a blind eye to the travesty of the Council.
Achieving reform may not be realistic. However, that should not deter those who work in the human rights field. If human rights advocates were to urge only those reforms which seemed likely in the short term to happen many of the worst victims of human rights violations would be left without defenders.
Too many diplomats whom I have met in Geneva have an overly localized focus. They think of their audience as other diplomats on the other side of the UN chamber who are unlikely to be budged.
15 Posted at
Human Rights Council".
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Yet, when we talk about UN reform, our audience is the planet. A statement made in Geneva or about Geneva may have no echoes within the halls of the UN. But it can reverberate around the globe.
Here as elsewhere our primary audience for human rights advocacy is not the perpetrators; it is the victims and, after them, the public. We should be telling the victims and the public that anti-Zionists have taken away from victims everywhere their UN human rights body, their chance to have their victimization exposed and condemned on the world stage. If enough people everywhere come to appreciate that, the UN eventually itself will change...... David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is senior honorary counsel to B’nai Brith Canada.