U.N. admits foxes to the henhouse

It's insanity at the UN. It's getting harder and harder to keep taking the UN seriously.
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U.N. admits foxes to the henhouse

December 9, 2004

The United Nations has recognized that its 53-member Commission on Human Rights is in dire need of reform.

A report prepared for Secretary General Kofi Annan accurately noted that some of the grosser human rights violators are seeking commission seats as a way of deflecting and avoiding criticism of their records.

Sudan, guilty of tolerating both slavery and genocide, is serving a third term as a member. Sudan's man at the United Nations said the United States was in no position to criticize Sudan's abysmal record on human rights because of the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, a truly bizarre assertion of moral equivalence.

Cuba won uncontested re-election to the commission even as the Castro regime was pointedly jailing dissidents. Libya was even commission chair for a term.

Zimbabwe - another routine violator of human rights - was given a seat over U.S. objections.

Having these members on board further paralyzes a body whose activities on behalf of human rights can best be described as sluggish.

The best solution would be for the United Nations to confront its worst members by establishing standards for membership - rule of law, free press, independent judiciary, humane criminal justice system. Like membership in NATO or the European Union, candidates would be expected to meet certain criteria.

But the reforms proposed to Annan would go the other direction. There would be no standards and membership would be thrown open to any U.N. member who wanted to serve. This is as good as having no commission at all - an option that begins to look more and more attractive as the commission grows more and more ineffectual.

And that would be too bad because, for all the organization's faults, many millions of people really do look to it for help. Given the current state of the United Nations, however, it may simply be too much to expect that an institution founded in part to protect human rights would actually bother to do so.