Roy Brown at IHEU.org reports:
Vote on freedom of expression marks the end of Universal Human Rights
Submitted by admin on 30 March, 2008 - 08:32.
* UN Geneva
* Freedom of expression
* Alert/Warning
Alert/Warning
UN Geneva
For the past eleven years the organisation of the Islamic Conference
(OIC), representing the 57 Islamic States, has been tightening its
grip on the throat of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Yesterday, 28 March 2008, they finally killed it.
With the support of their allies including China, Russia and Cuba
(none well-known for their defence of human rights) the Islamic States
succeeded in forcing through an amendment to a resolution on Freedom
of Expression that has turned the entire concept on its head. The UN
Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression will now be required to
report on the "abuse" of this most cherished freedom by anyone who,
for example, dares speak out against Sharia laws that require women to
be stoned to death for adultery or young men to be hanged for being
gay, or against the marriage of girls as young as nine, as in Iran.
Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan saw the writing on the wall
three years ago when he spoke of the old Commission on Human Rights
having "become too selective and too political in its work". Piecemeal
reform would not be enough. The old system needed to be swept away and
replaced by something better. The Human Rights Council was supposed to
be that new start, a Council whose members genuinely supported, and
were prepared to defend, the principles of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
Yet since its inception in June 2006, the Human Rights Council has
failed to condemn the most egregious examples of human rights abuse in
the Sudan, Byelorussia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China and elsewhere,
whilst repeatedly condemning Israel and Israel alone.
Three years later Annan's dream lies shattered, and the Human Rights
Council stands exposed as incapable of fulfilling its central role:
the promotion and protection of human rights. The Council died
yesterday in Geneva, and with it the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights whose 60th anniversary we were actually celebrating this year.
There has been a seismic shift in the balance of power in the UN
system. For over a decade the Islamic States have been flexing their
muscles. Yesterday they struck. There can no longer be any pretence
that the Human Rights Council can defend human rights. The moral
leadership of the UN system has moved from the States who created the
UN in the aftermath of the Second World War, committed to the concepts
of equality, individual freedom and the rule of law, to the Islamic
States, whose allegiance is to a narrow, medieval worldview defined
exclusively in terms of man's duties towards Allah, and to their
fellow-travellers, the States who see their future economic and
political interests as being best served by their alliances with the
Islamic States.
Yesterday's attack by the Islamists, led by Pakistan, had the subtlety
of a thin-bladed knife slipped silently under the ribs of the Human
Rights Council. At first reading the amendment to the resolution to
renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression
might seem reasonable. It requires the Special Rapporteur:
"To report on instances in which the abuse of the right of freedom of
expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination …"
For Canada, who had fought long and hard as main sponsor of this
resolution to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, this was
too much. The internationally agreed limits to Freedom of Expression
are detailed in article 19 of the legally binding International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and are already referred to in
the preamble to the resolution. If abuse of freedom of expression
infringed anyone's freedom of religion, for example, it would fall
within the scope of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion. To
add it here was unnecessary duplication, and "Requesting the Special
Rapporteur to report on abuses of [this right] would turn the mandate
on its head. Instead of promoting freedom of expression the Special
Rapporteur would be policing its exercise … If this amendment is
adopted, Canada will withdraw its sponsorship from the main
resolution."
Canada's position was echoed by several delegations including India,
who objected to the change of focus from protecting to limiting
freedom of expression. The European Union, the United Kingdom
(speaking for Australia and the United States), India, Brazil,
Bolivia, Guatemala and Switzerland all withdrew their sponsorship of
the main resolution when the amendment was passed. In total, more than
20 of the original 53 co-sponsors of the resolution withdrew their
support.
On the vote, the amendment was adopted by 27 votes to 15 against, with
three abstentions.
The Sri Lankan delegate explained clearly his reasons for supporting
the amendment:
".. if we regulate certain things 'minimally' we may be able to
prevent them from being enacted violently on the streets of our towns
and cities."
In other words: Don't exercise your right to freedom of expression
because your opponents may become violent. For the first time in the
60 year history of UN Human Rights bodies, a fundamental human right
has been limited simply because of the possible violent reaction by
the enemies of human rights.
The violence we have seen played out in reaction to the Danish
cartoons is thus excused by the Council – it was the cartoonists whose
freedom of expression needed to be regulated. And Theo van Gogh can be
deemed responsible for his own death.
Freedom of expression is that right which – uniquely – enables us to
expose, communicate and condemn abuse of all our other rights. Without
freedom of expression and freedom of the press we give the green light
to tyranny and make it impossible to expose corruption, incompetence,
injustice and oppression.
But however important freedom of expression may be for us who live in
the West, its overwhelming importance for those who live under the
tyranny of Islamic law was highlighted by a courageous group of 21
NGOs from the Islamic States who issued a statement yesterday
appealing to delegations to oppose the amendment. See
http://www.article19.org/pdfs/press/petition-hrc.pdf
Incredibly, following the vote on the amendment, the Council descended
even further into chaos. At the very last moment, Cuba introduced an
oral amendment – clearly against the rules of procedure. When Canada
objected they were overruled by the President. When Slovenia – on
behalf of the European Union – tried to intervene on a point of order
and ask for a ten-minute adjournment, they were ignored. When they
tried to protest in another point of order their right to do so was
challenged by Egypt, and the Egyptian objection was upheld.
The main resolution was then put to the vote and was adopted by 32
votes in favour, none against, with 15 abstentions.
The NGO community now needs to think carefully about what purpose can
any longer be served by continuing our engagement with the Human
Rights Council, and by fighting for values that are no longer accepted
within the UN system. I have personally been involved with the Human
Rights Commission and Council for the past five years and can see
little benefit in continuing. Our well-argued position papers are
ignored, our speeches are interrupted with repeated and irrelevant
points of order, and we are not even supported in our efforts by the
western delegations who, shockingly, did not even vote against today's
travesty, but abstained.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights died yesterday. Who knows
when, or if, it can ever be revived.
I used to wonder what States who felt it necessary to kill people
because they change their religion thought they were doing in the
Human Rights Council. Now I know.
The wafer-thin sham of an international consensus on the promotion and
protection of human rights has finally been exposed for what it was –
a sham. The fragmentation of human rights now appears inevitable. The
proposed Islamic Charter on Human Rights (read "Duties towards Allah")
will certainly go ahead, as will the creation of a parallel Islamic
Council on Human Rights. But the OIC will nevertheless continue to
attend and dominate the UN Human Rights Council, thereby ensuring its
continuing emasculation and descent into total irrelevance.
Just five months before he and more than 20 of his colleagues were
killed by a terrorist bomb in Baghdad, the then High Commissioner for
Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, wrote:
"Membership of the Commission on Human Rights must carry
responsibilities. I therefore wonder whether the time has not come for
the Commission itself to develop a code of guidelines for access to
membership of the Commission and a code of conduct for members while
they serve on the Commission. After all the Commission on Human Rights
has a duty to humanity and the members of the Commission must
themselves set the example of adherence to the international human
rights norms – in practice as well as in law…"
States who are genuinely concerned with human rights should
immediately withdraw from the Council until such time as all member
states as well as those offering themselves for election agree to
honour their pledges, and undertake to expel any member state which,
having been put on notice regarding its human rights record, fails to
put its house in order within a reasonable timescale. Failing this,
what better tribute to Sergio de Mello could there be than to create
an alternative organisation – Kofi Annan's organisation of the willing
- whose members agree to adopt Sergio de Mello's guidelines and code
of conduct – and are actually held to account.
Roy W Brown
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