UN makes replacing rights panel a 2006 priority

By Warren Hoge The New York Times

UN officials have decided they must act within weeks to produce an alternative to the widely discredited Human Rights Commission to maintain hope of redeeming the UN's credibility in 2006.

The commission, based in Geneva, has been a persistent embarrassment to the United Nations because participation has been open to countries like Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe, current members who are themselves accused of gross rights abuses. Libya held the panel's chairmanship in 2003.

"The reason highly abusive governments flock to the commission is to prevent condemnation of themselves and their kind," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, "and most of the time they succeed. If you're a thug, you want to be on the committee that tries to condemn thugs."

Mark Malloch Brown, chief of staff to Secretary General Kofi Annan, noted that there are two other crucial steps toward reform in place: a new peacebuilding commission to help countries emerging from war, and a biennial budget under an arrangement laying the groundwork for major management change by June.

But, he said, the rights commission has taken center stage.

"For the great global public, the performance or nonperformance of the Human Rights Commission has become the litmus test of UN renewal," he said. "We can't overestimate getting a clear win on this in January."

Annan begins his last year in office with a mandate to bring fundamental and lasting change to the beleaguered institution, which has struggled through a period of scandal and mismanagement.

Negotiators have been struggling for months over the terms of a new Human Rights Council that Annan proposed last spring to replace the commission. A hoped-for agreement in December did not materialize.

Negotiators resume talks on Jan. 11 and must settle on a resolution for the new council soon after to have it in place by March, when the commission reconvenes in Geneva.

"The commission should hold that meeting with the understanding that it is going to be its last meeting," said Ricardo Arias, the ambassador of Panama, who is one of the leaders of the group drawing up the new Human Rights Council.

The current commission has 53 members serving staggered three-year terms and elected from closed slates put forward by regional groups. It meets each year in Geneva for six weeks.

The proposed council would exist year-round, be free to act when rights violations are discovered, conduct periodic reviews of every country's human rights performance and meet more frequently throughout the year.

Still in dispute are the council's size, the procedures for citing individual countries, how often the panel would meet, a possible two-term limit for membership and whether members would be chosen based on agreed criteria of human rights performance or by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly as a way of weeding out notorious rights violators.

The proposal envisions votes on each individual candidate for membership rather than on regional slates.

As with most of the changes being proposed, the rights council has drawn suspicion from the poorer and less developed countries of the 191-member General Assembly. They say they fear that the new council may be yet another way for wealthier and more powerful countries to intrude in their affairs.

Abdallah Baali, the ambassador of Algeria, said the main concern of objecting countries was "whether or not this council will impose both its measures and its views on a member state or will it seek their cooperation in order to improve their human rights records."

That said, he added that Algeria supported the proposed council.

UN diplomats singled out Egypt and Pakistan as countries that were leading the resistance to the proposed council.

In introducing his recommendation for a new council last March, Annan cited the flaws in the current commission and the consequences for the United Nations of not reforming it.

The commission had been undermined, he contended, by allowing participation of countries whose purpose was "not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others."

"As a result," Annan said, "a credibility deficit has developed, which casts a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole."


Roth of Human Rights Watch was more blunt.

"If the governments of the world cannot get together on human rights at the UN, then it is a shameful act for the entire organization," he said.

Kristen Silverberg, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for international organizations, said the priorities were "to improve the membership so that countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan were not eligible" and "to make sure the council can act."

"Some countries have argued that it's better for the council to stay away from anything that would embarrass a country, but we think the council needs to be prepared to take action in serious cases like Darfur and Burma," she said in a reference to the country now known as Myanmar.