United States of Torture fails to stop new UN rights body
theage: The United Nations has voted overwhelmingly to establish a new body to promote human rights, despite strong opposition from the US.
Australia was one of the 170 countries that supported the new body, the Human Rights Council, to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission.
The council will meet regularly through the year, including special sessions to deal with a crisis. The old commission met only a few weeks a year.
The council, one of the more important reforms of the UN that Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been calling for, came out of the summit of world leaders last September.
Mr Annan had condemned the old Human Rights Commission, saying it had been discredited by human rights abusers joining it in order to protect themselves from criticism or in order to criticise another country.
Countries such as Sudan and Burma were able to be elected because of a system of bloc or regional voting. The new body will be elected by the entire General Assembly.
The US, one of four countries to oppose the new body, demanded that each country's vote be recorded. Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau also voted against it.
US ambassador John Bolton said the council did not represent sufficient improvement on the old commission. He railed against compromises agreed to in order to get majority support for the council.
"We must not let history remember us as the architects of a council that was a compromise and merely the best we could do," Mr Bolton said.
But the president of the General Assembly, Sweden's Jan Eliasson, refused to reopen negotiations, fearing that would open a Pandora's box.
Countries such as Russia, Cuba, Pakistan and some Arab states were reported to have been ready to try to impose their own ideas on the council if it had been reopened for negotiation.
Mr Bolton said the United States objected to the dropping of a proposal to require two-thirds of the countries in the General Assembly to support a country in order for it to be elected to the council. Council members will instead be elected by a simple majority.
Countries subject to sanctions for human rights abuses or for supporting terrorism should be barred, he said, and there should not be a two-term limit on council membership. Read more
db: We know the US supports terror and human rights abuses - they would be leading contenders to be barred.
Australia was one of the 170 countries that supported the new body, the Human Rights Council, to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission.
The council will meet regularly through the year, including special sessions to deal with a crisis. The old commission met only a few weeks a year.
The council, one of the more important reforms of the UN that Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been calling for, came out of the summit of world leaders last September.
Mr Annan had condemned the old Human Rights Commission, saying it had been discredited by human rights abusers joining it in order to protect themselves from criticism or in order to criticise another country.
Countries such as Sudan and Burma were able to be elected because of a system of bloc or regional voting. The new body will be elected by the entire General Assembly.
The US, one of four countries to oppose the new body, demanded that each country's vote be recorded. Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau also voted against it.
US ambassador John Bolton said the council did not represent sufficient improvement on the old commission. He railed against compromises agreed to in order to get majority support for the council.
"We must not let history remember us as the architects of a council that was a compromise and merely the best we could do," Mr Bolton said.
But the president of the General Assembly, Sweden's Jan Eliasson, refused to reopen negotiations, fearing that would open a Pandora's box.
Countries such as Russia, Cuba, Pakistan and some Arab states were reported to have been ready to try to impose their own ideas on the council if it had been reopened for negotiation.
Mr Bolton said the United States objected to the dropping of a proposal to require two-thirds of the countries in the General Assembly to support a country in order for it to be elected to the council. Council members will instead be elected by a simple majority.
Countries subject to sanctions for human rights abuses or for supporting terrorism should be barred, he said, and there should not be a two-term limit on council membership. Read more
db: We know the US supports terror and human rights abuses - they would be leading contenders to be barred.
posted by exoplanet at 2:37 PM
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