On a May 03:
2001 US Is Voted
Off Rights Panel of the UN for the First Time
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In a move that reflected a growing
frustration with the US's attitude toward international organizations
and treaties, the United States was voted off the United Nations Human
Rights Commission today for the first time since the panel's founding
under US leadership in 1947. The ouster of the United States from
the commission while nations like Sudan and Pakistan were chosen for
membership was certain to generate further hostility to the United
Nations among conservatives in Washington in the regime of arrogant
usurper-President “Dubya” Bush. The unexpected move, which
came in a secret vote, was apparently supported even by some friends
of the United States. The vote also served notice that a bloc of developing
nations opposed to US policies is becoming much stronger and more
effective, and that Washington can no longer expect to be elected
automatically to important panels. Four nations competed today to
fill three Western vacancies for three-year terms on the 53-member
commission. The secret vote is conducted among the members of the
Economic and Social Council, which oversees the Geneva-based commission
and is made up of different members than the commission, although
there can be some overlap, as there is now. France had 52 votes out
of a possible 54 today, Austria got 41 and Sweden 32. The United States
trailed with 29 and was eliminated.
"It's an unequivocally devastating
blow," said William H. Luers, president of the United Nations Association
of the United States, the largest US support group for the organization.
He said he feared the effect on a Congress with many critics of the
organization. "It couldn't be worse," he said. "All the conservatives
in the administration will see this as proof that we are in an organization
full of enemies." Also elected to the commission today were Bahrain,
Korea, Pakistan, Croatia, Armenia, Chile, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Sudan,
Togo and Uganda. One-third of the seats on the commission — which
meets annually to survey human rights practices, pass resolutions
critical of abusers and assign monitors — are open to election every
year. President Bush, addressing the American Jewish Committee tonight,
made one of his strongest statements yet of the country's defense
of human rights and religious freedoms, dwelling on Sudan and China,
but did not address the decision on the Human Rights Committee.
Amnesty International USA called the
removal of the United States from the commission "part of an effort
by nations that routinely violate human rights to escape scrutiny."
Amnesty accused members of commission of failing to do their job,
succumbing instead to political and economic pressures. "The US was
among the few nations willing to actively push for condemnation at
the U.N.H.R.C. of the brutal human rights violations committed by
nations like China," it said. At Human Rights Watch, Joanna Weschler,
the group's representative at the United Nations, said the commission
was becoming "a rogues' gallery of human rights abusers." But she
added: "It wasn't just enemies. It was friends as well who voted the
US out of the commission." Friends of the United States in Europe
and elsewhere have grown increasingly impatient, disappointed and
annoyed with actions by Washington. And in recent years, critics of
the United Nations in Congress have played down US involvement in
world organizations generally, rejected a host of treaties and agreements
and built up a huge debt in overdue payments to the United Nations
budget. More than $580 million of that debt is still tied up in the
House of Representatives despite an agreement worked out in December
to lower US dues. Then came the Bush administration's rejection of
the Kyoto pact to reduce global warming and a decision to develop
a missile shield that many other nations saw as a threat to the 1972
antiballistic missile treaty and to arms control in general.
Madeleine K. Albright, who was the
United States ambassador to the United Nations before becoming secretary
of state, said in an interview that it was "beyond belief" that at
the end of the day Sudan was a member of the commission and the United
States was not. Sudan has been accused of a broad array of human rights
abuses during its civil war, including slavery. "It's really a bad
decision, and it is not only going to harm the ability of the United
Nations to function on human rights issues because the United States
was the one who was depended upon to introduce some of the resolutions,
but I also believe that it will harm the United Nations," Dr. Albright
said. "It's one of those things where decisions are made out of some
kind of short-term pique or something like that, and it hurts very
much at a time when the United Nations needs very much to have US
support."
Today, Singapore's ambassador to the
United Nations, Kishore Mahbubani, who is currently a member of the
Security Council, said it was not US human rights policies that led
to this vote, but the overall perception of US inattention to the
organization. He said the United States would have to be better at
the active campaigning and political horse-trading that other nations
employ to gain places on important committees and other bodies. The
administration has not yet sent an ambassador to New York. Although
John Negroponte, a career diplomat, has been named to the job of United
Nations ambassador, his name has not yet been sent to the Senate for
confirmation. Representative Nita M. Lowey, the New York Democrat
who is co-chairman of the bipartisan United Nations working group
and ranking Democrat on the House foreign operations subcommittee,
said in a statement today that what happened was an embarrassment
to the United States. "President Bush has dragged his feet in getting
key foreign policy officials confirmed," she said. "It is unacceptable
that we still have no U.N. ambassador, and this vote is a painful
blow to to our global leadership on human rights and democracy. The
US commitment to human rights has fallen victim to the administration's
laissez-faire attitude toward diplomacy and foreign policy."
The acting United States ambassador
to the United Nations, James B. Cunningham, said today that the outcome
"won't, of course, affect our commitment to human rights issues, in
and outside the United Nations." Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador,
attributed the overwhelming vote for France to its policy of approaching
human rights issues with cooperation and dialogue rather than confrontation,
a system he said worked well with China. France and other European
nations did not back an American resolution at the just-concluded
six-week annual session of the Human Rights Commission that would
have held China up to public criticism. But, Mr. Levitte said, that
did not mean that France was prepared to go soft on human rights issues
in the commission, where the French often back American moves on other
issues. "We need the US engagement in the U.N., and we need the US
in the Human Rights Commission," he said. "My hope is that what happened
will not trigger bitter feelings in the US Congress and a new fever
against the U.N."
In Washington, Representative Christopher
H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey and vice chairman of the House
International Relations Committee, who took part in the recent annual
commission meeting in Geneva as part of the Bush administration's
delegation, said he was "disappointed but not surprised" by today's
action. "In Geneva, there was a great deal of animosity about the
United States bringing the resolution on China," he said. "This seems
to me to be a retaliation in part for standing side by side with Israel
and standing out on China. This to me is payback for our principled
positions." Mr. Smith backs a Congressional call for US action in
voting countries that abuse rights off the commission if the panel's
credibility is to survive.
Felice Gaer, director of the Jacob
Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights in New York
and a member of the United Nations Committee Against Torture, said
that, at this year's Human Rights Commission meeting, the US delegation
did a lot of good in pressing for criticism of countries like China,
Iran and Cuba. But when it came to issues like children's rights and
the outlawing of "disappearances," the United States took an aggressively
negative stand. William van den Heuvel, a former US deputy representative
at the United Nations who is now chairman of the Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park NY, said today's vote would have
"serious repercussions" on the Human Rights Commission, which Mrs.
Roosevelt helped to create. He said, moreover, that to have all three
new Western seats filled by members of the European Union was questionable.
But he also said the United States had to face a new reality. "There
are so many people in so many countries who are so angry at the United
States for not living up to its word," he said, after a briefing for
ambassadors here before the vote in the Economic and Social Council.
"We're advised too by our representatives how various members of the
United Nations are increasingly finding the United States an untrustworthy
partner." Concerns about the US:
Landmine convention
International tribunal jurisdiction
not paying UN dues
death penalty
disregard of human rights violated by allies (e.g. Israel)
School of the Americas
inadequate punishment of US war criminals and police brutality.
hypocritical policies on immigrants and asylum
rejection of Kyoto Protocol on global warming
inadequate health care
intention to violate the anti-ballistic missile treaty |
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