GENEVA: The UN Commission on Human Rights will meet this year without the US, for the first time in 56 years - a fact that augurs new conclusions in the commission’s assessments of the world’s most flagrant human rights violations.
Washington’s absence will be noted in debates in which it traditionally takes the role of accuser, like the cases of China, Chechnya and Cuba. Its absence will especially stand out with respect to its habitual role as Israel’s defender.
The US was voted off the 53-member Human Rights Commission in a secret ballot held May 10, 2001 in the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in New York.
Washington will miss the debate on the situation in Afghanistan, discussed since 1984 by the Commission, which issued alarming resolutions on that country’s human rights record in the last few sessions.
The Commission had referred to the gravity of the situation in Afghanistan, but delays were seen in the implementation of international policies, said the current chairman, Argentine representative Leandro Despouy.
UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Kamal Hossain of Bangladesh, has already demanded that the US-led military forces involved in the “war against terrorism” respect international humanitarian law.
Hossain called for investigations into a massacre of prisoners belonging to the Taliban movement in Masar-i-Sharif, reportedly the result of a crackdown on a prison riot, and denounced by human rights groups.
In the case of Afghanistan and other questions of particular interest to America in the Commission, the US will likely depend on the countries of western Europe, which are its allies in the international fight against terrorism and in the Commission’s bloc of Western nations.
But paradoxically, it was the Europeans who dislodged the US from the Commission, to which it will return in 2003.
Despouy said that in the coming session, to be chaired by Polish delegate Krzysztof Jakubowski, it was likely that no resolution condemning China for rights violations would be presented, now that the US is not on the Commission.
Washington has traditionally taken the lead in sponsoring resolutions against China, which that country systematically blocks by filing a “no action motion,” a controversial procedural loophole.
The absence of the US and Russia’s closer ties with the West make it likely that a resolution on human rights violations in Chechnya will face the same fate, since it was the US that sponsored the resolutions censuring Moscow.
On the other hand, things will become more complicated for Israel, which is not represented on the Commission and depends on US support to avoid unanimously approved condemnations sponsored by the Arab nations.
US presence on the Commission is also indispensable for obtaining an alternative voting procedure, the nominal vote, in resolutions against Israel, which allows the identification of the position adopted by each government.
In the case of a nominal vote, the names of the members as well as their votes are recorded in the stenographic record of the sitting.
In the Commission’s upcoming session, only the European Union will be able to request a nominal vote, said Despouy.
However, prior agreement between Brussels and Tel Aviv would be required - something that is not likely, because the Europeans generally take a more critical attitude towards Israel than the United States. —Dawn/InterPress Service.
