Libya election ignites concerns about U.S. on Human Rights Council

The controversial election of Libya to the United Nations Human Rights
Council this week has ignited concerns about the role of the U.S. on the panel.

A year ago, the U.S. ran on an uncontested slate of candidates
for one of the slots on the council. Reversing the policy of the George W. Bush administration,
the Obama administration said the best way to reform the council was from within, and vowed to
use America’s seat on the controversial panel to effect change.

{mosads}Yet human-rights groups pleaded with the administration to stop the
election of Libya, Angola, Malaysia, Uganda and Thailand, which were
among the 14 nations to again run on an uncontested slate and secure a
spot on the council.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice would not reveal how the U.S.
voted on Libya’s candidacy, which got 155 votes out of 192 members in
the General Assembly on Thursday.

“I think it’s fair to say that this year, there is a small number of
countries whose human rights records is problematic that are likely to
be elected and we regret that,” Rice told reporters Thursday. “I’m not
going to sit here and name names. I don’t think it’s particularly
constructive at this point.”

She lauded Iran’s withdrawal from the ballot in April in the face of
protests over its run for a seat on the council, though last month
Iran won a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women, on which the
U.S. also sits.

“Libya’s farcical ‘election’ also debunks the myth that unconditional
U.S. participation in the Human Rights Council has improved that
body,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), ranking Republican on the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Friday.

“Without meaningful membership standards, that body will remain
nothing more than a rogues’ gallery, and our participation will have
the net result of legitimizing its biased actions.”

Democratic leaders on the House and Senate foreign relations panels did not respond to requests for comment.

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said that the U.S. could have
actively tried to get another African nation to run on the ballot,
giving Libya some competition. The lack of competitiveness in the
election yet again was a major sore spot for human-rights groups.

“Iran’s withdrawal showed that international pressure can improve the
membership of the council, and demonstrated the importance of
competitive elections for seats,” said Bahey el-din Hassan, director
of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS).

Even though Libya would have likely succeeded anyway, said Bolton,
“part of representing America at U.N. is standing for principle.”

“Does it outrage me that Libya was elected? No,” Bolton told The Hill.
“It’s entirely predictable that the council would turn out to be as
bad or worse than its predecessor.”

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights was replaced by the current
council in 2006. Many mark the beginning of that commission’s end to
be the election of Libya as chair in 2003. Reporters Without Borders,
one of the human-rights groups that lobbied to keep Libya off the
council, predicted a similar loss of credibility now for the current
panel.

“Many political leaders and NGOs think that by incorporating the less
democratic countries into the Human Rights Council the situation in
these countries will gradually improve,” the press-freedom
organization said in a statement. “The examples of China and Cuba,
which have been members of the Council for years, show that this is
not the case.”

Rice stressed that the U.S. believes countries with strong records in
favor of human rights should sit on the council.

“And those that don’t meet that standard really don’t merit membership
on the Human Rights Council,” she said. “But in this body, as in other
U.N. bodies, there will always be countries whose orientations and
perspectives we don’t agree with, and yet we have to work with them.
And that’s what we will do in this context as well.”

Rice also touted progress that the U.S. has made on the council,
including pushing the U.S. “perspective on the problematic concept of
defamation of religion,” a resolution pushed by the nations in the Organization of the Islamic Conference that singles out defamation of Islam but
critics contend violates free speech.

“It will take time, no doubt, for our efforts and those of others to
bear fruit and it’s not a task that the United States can accomplish
on its own,” Rice said. “But we remain committed to strengthening and
reforming this Council.”

Some observers remain skeptical after witnessing the first year of the
U.S. on the council, which wraps up with a session next month.

“They’ve done some things to try to achieve progress and might have
achieved some modest progress in some limited areas,” Hillel Neuer,
executive director of Geneva-based UN Watch, told The Hill.

The year has included resolutions against North Korea, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Guinea, which Rice lauded Thursday. But
Neuer, who noted that it only takes 16 of the council’s 47 members to trigger an emergency session, said it was a “terrible disappointment” that there haven’t been
attempts to call out countries such as Iran, Syria, Libya and
Zimbabwe, and no response to incidents such as the killings of
hundreds in Nigerian religious violence.

“We welcomed the U.S. participation a year ago provided that they
would speak out against abuses,” Neuer said. “We haven’t seen what it
is we’re looking for.”

Bolton predicted that the U.S. will increasingly become a target of
Libya and other nations on the council, but said the administration
will forge ahead regardless because “they are desperate to find some
success in their ideological pursuit of multilateralism.”

“The only way to deal with a fundamentally flawed body is not
participate,” he said. “When you’re not willing to stand up against
Iran or Libya you have to ask what you’re there for.”

Libya, which is ranked as one of the “world’s most repressive
societies” by Freedom House and where, according to Amnesty
International, free expression can bring the death penalty, voted
against resolutions condemning human-rights violations in Iran,
Myanmar and North Korea over the past year at the General Assembly.

Observers will be keeping a close eye on the second year of America’s
council term, which expires in 2012.

“We haven’t reached the conclusion that the U.S. shouldn’t be on it,
but we are concerned with what it’s done so far and what needs to be
done to make its membership meaningful,” Neuer said.

“The scorecard for America’s year on the Council? Anti-Israel
resolutions: 6; resolutions and special sessions on Iran, Syria, Cuba,
and Libya: Zero,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

“The U.S. should immediately withdraw its participation and funding
from this compromised Human Rights Council and leverage them to
produce sweeping, effective reform,” the congresswoman said.

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