UN-tethered

Statement by Human Rights Organizations in Protest Against US Withdrawal of UN Human Rights Council

Download UN-Human-Rights-Council-Withdrawal Letter

A Great Explication of What's Wrong with Russia and Multilaterals

Today, the UN Human Rights Council approved the nomination of Miklos Haraszti as the new Special Rapporteur on Belarus. Good! He's the perfect man for the job, and I was rooting for him. The other candidates included two Russian NGO leaders active at the UN and OSCE competing against each other (?), but I think no Russian, good or bad, should be appointed in this position so that the mandate isn't either owned or disowned by Russia.

Haraszi is from Hungary, which doesn't have any fresh beef with Russia, if you don't count that Soviet invasion in 1956. Hungary itself has backslide on press freedom, as Haraszti himself has had to point out, in his position as the Representative on Media Freedom for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. I have known Haraszti since his days as a dissident samizdat editor in Hungary in the days of the Soviet empire, and he has consistently been an informed and skilled advovcate for free media. To work these multilateral institutions effectively, you have to be seased at being an insider at them, and he has that experience for years at OSCE; you also have to have the passion being an NGO activist gives you -- but I actually tend to favour skilled bureaucrats than NGOs in these jobs, because often I find, there is nothing worse than when an NGO comes to power. They become more secretive and even more bureaucratic than the foreign service officials. I don't think Haraszti suffers from that problem  -- while he may have hung with the ratty sweater set in his day, he has held real jobs as a professor, published articles and books and so on.

Now, you would think that a candidate with a solid record as an international civil servant, if you will, for years at OSCE, and from Hungary, would be suitable for Russia. After all, knowing Russian is an asset in this job, and nearly a requirement -- quite frankly, since the Belarusian dictator won't let these type of mandate-holders on to their territory, the job will consist of having to watch the press, talk to NGOs, and try to convince Russia and other post-Soviet allies propping up the dictatorship to do less of that.

Well, you would be wrong if you would think this candidate would be suitable for Russia -- and likely even Yuri Dzhibladze, one Russian NGO advocate who is always approved enough by the Russian government to be on Putin's Presidential Council for Human Rights would not be satisfactory. In fact, they don't even support the mandate.

And here, as if beamed on the sky in lights, is an interesting document that basically says everything there is to say about what's wrong with Russia, and what's wrong with these multilateral institutions like the OSCE and UN and Council of Europe that are increasingly getting paralyzed by Russia.

The press releases below from the UN really highlight the bad faith, the manipulations, the non-compliance, and therefore the paralysis of these bodies -- due to the Kremlin. Bad-faith with the same bad ideas like Venezuela and Cuba are tapped for operations like opposing this basic human rights mandate for Belarus; Cuba is particularly malicious and mendatious in its interventions here as you can see. Venezuela is laughable -- the whole idea of special rapporteurs dealing with human rights problems caused often by governments themselves is that they have to enter countries to examine the situation. If the government under question has a veto on entry, that's not a very independent and effective institution, now, is it?! Yet the Chavez regime insists that it has credibility advocating for "true" human rights and was for "genuine" dialogue and against "double standards". Double standards are in fact what every one of these countries sounding off to protect that lunatic in Minsk are all about!

China -- no surprise there, with their "dialogue" shtick -- which means, let's substitute real human rights progress with endless choreographed, stilted official chat sessions punished by threat of suspension for the slightest discouraging word. Sri Lanka -- now there's a country that got a horrific pass for its massacre of its people at this same body at the UN, discrediting it thoroughly.

So here you can see it, pasted below -- this chorus of unsupportable slams on the West as bias (um, do we really disagree about the state of human rights in Belarus when a parliamentary election doesn't get a single opposition seat, when most of the alternative candidates in the presidential elections wound up being thrown in jail and tortured?!)  And the demand for people outside the region as supposedly unbiased with the endless insatiable "geographical distribution" problem at the UN (read: let's have every one of the permanent 5 veto-holders on the UN Security Council in every office that might actually do something in order to hobble its work). That's why we get people without the most commonly used languages of the Eurasian region, say African Francophones, dealing with these habitual massive human rights offenders unevenly -- and avoiding the countries where they actually know something but where they would be blocked by the despots of their continent.

Anything to block real independent monitoring and advocacy and anything to block scrutiny.

When you see the lousy excuses these serial, massive human rights abusers give for not doing anything on Belarus -- the same ones they use, BTW, for not acting on Syria or Iran or Sudan -- you see where the problems are in the world. They are not in Washington. They are not about the Anglo-American club. they aren't about the evil imperialist West. That is, the Soviet-style fellow travellers you still find out there (like Wikileaks' spokesman for the region) and even just "concerned progressives" will claim that the US bangs on Belarus simply because it can, and is silent about worse offenses in Uzbekistan.

True. But look at the setting of the world's human rights bodies, and you get why Washington has to overcompensate. The outrageous, conniving destructiveness here. This mandate won't even get to enter the country. He'll try, he'll write letters, he'll issue some statements of alarm about this or that case of imprisonment or torture or website closure, he'll write a report. And yet, doing his job, doing the most minimal that a UN official can do, he will be denied legitimacy by China, Russia, and others as if he is, oh, sanctioning mass murder in Syria like they are. You know, doing something oh-so-horrible.

In stark relief, you see why it is so hard to get things done, now only at the UN Human Rights Council, but anywhere. While the global leftist circuit might not be terribly interested in Belarus -- they get up their appetite only if they can bash a Western capitalist corporation related to the issue -- they can at least reluctantly concede that Belarus has a low human rights record and Lukashenka, whatever his ardent friendship with his fellow dictators in Iran and Venezuela, is not a force for progress in the world. So they ought to be able to detect with this red-dyed UN press release where the real problems in the world -- those regimes that they never seem to cross the street to go after. But they don't. That's why I want to keep this handy.

See for yourself:

Cuba said it had an objection to the proposals put forward and said that, in the matter of nominations, there was discrimination against Cuba. In the election of the Special Rapporteur on Belarus, fluency in Russian should not have been a criterion of selection, said Cuba and added that there needed to be more consistency in the nominations. It was problematic that a national of the European Union was nominated for the Special Rapporteur on Belarus, because the European Union was a major proponent of the resolution. Cuba was not ready to accept the proposed candidate from Hungary as mandate holder for Belarus.

Russia said that it had voted against the Human Rights Council resolution on Belarus which it believed was full of prejudice and excluded Belarus rather than included it in dialogue. Russia did not support anyone as Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus.

China believed in constructive dialogue and was against politicization in the issues of human rights. Most of the members of the Human Rights Council had either voted against or abstained in the vote on establishing the mandate on Belarus. China would not participate in the selection of the Special Rapporteur on this country.

Austria said that the appointment of mandate holders was not an easy task and the Consultative Group did not take it lightly. Since the beginning, several names had been proposed in order to allow flexibility in consultations and there was no reason to challenge the President and the proposals made.

LAURA LASSERRE DUPUY, President of the Human Rights Council said that nominations were not a question of personal choice or regional groups, but followed the rules and eligibility of candidates. Regional affiliation of candidates needed to be taken into account to ensure equality. It was a prerogative of the President to decide among the proposed candidates and she noted the need for objectivity, independence and integrity in carrying out the mandate.

The Council then endorsed the proposed list of candidates for the Special Procedures.

Cuba said that it was the responsibility of the President to appoint the mandate holder and regretted that Cuba was not able to support the candidate for the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus.

Belarus said that in connection with the appointment of a candidate as Special Rapporteur on Belarus, Belarus did not recognize that decision of the Council. Given his past experience, Mr. Haraszti would not be able to carry out his mandate in an objective and impartial fashion. Pursuant to the United Nations Charter, Belarus would continue to ensure the fundamental rights and freedoms and within its jurisdiction, the rights of its own citizens, via the law, and not via the sentiments of the Special Rapporteur. The European Union initiatives in the Human Rights Council were seen as a political campaign of defamation against Belarus.

Venezuela said that it categorically refused the appointment of the Special Rapporteur on Belarus, which was a hostile measure that violated the principle of sovereignty, especially as it was not accepted by the country concerned. The mandate fed political confrontation. Venezuela reaffirmed its historical condemnation and denunciation of this serious threat to the true promotion and protection of human rights. It was absolutely vital for the Council to ensure it appealed for genuine dialogue, without double standards or politicization.

Sri Lanka reiterated its consistent position that action initiated in the promotion and protection of human rights of a country had to have the consent of that country, and be based on the principles of cooperation and genuine dialogue aimed at strengthening the domestic capacity of the country to comply with its human rights obligations for the benefit of its people. Sri Lanka was firmly of the view that the Council should not be seen to encourage debates and resolutions on country-specific situation by virtue of selective processes that ran counter to its founding principles.

Eritrea noted the decision of the Council to refer the situation in Eritrea to the public and reminded the Council to abide by the principles of neutrality and impartiality. The Council had clearly violated the provisions prohibiting politicised action and had not justified its motion to disregard those basic principles and criteria of admissibility. Eritrea therefore rejected the decision of the Council because it was politically motivated and did not accept the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea.

***

For extra credit, read the kind of factology the Kremlin indulges in -- which is so eerily similar to the "progressive" factology we constantly have in the US on the left around the elections -- and in fact, decades ago, the Kremlin is exactly where the Marxist "scientists" got this method.

The situation on Syria had been exacerbated, the news agencies were using false information and Russia understood that it was difficult to work in such conditions. Russia called on the Commission of Inquiry to act objectively and use verified facts and avoid using information that would intensify the conflict in Syria.

And note that the US is the cheese standing alone on two resolutions, one on "the right to development" and a complicated addition to an existing treaty on combating racism.

The US doesn't recognize the econonic rights implied by "right to development" and prevers to, well, just develop, using the civil and political liberties. I think the millions of people from all over the world who immigrate to the US agree.

And the US won't endorse the flawed "Durban Declaration" which is what you have to do if you endorse anything related to racism these days at the UN -- because that concluding document out of the controversial UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001 (which I attended) singled out Israel alone among all countries and implied it had a state racist policy. I see that this appalling Durbanized notion, fueled by the BDS movement, has succeeded in turning even Tom Friedman, who is implying that Israel might have an "apartheid" system. Gah. This is tendentious thinking masterminded from Cuba and the ANC.

Also problematic around racism work is the persistent attempt by the Organization for Islamic Conference to keep pushing for a global blasphemy law in the form of a resolution on "defamation of religion". Alarmingly, Obama himself has seemed to tacitly agree with this in his recent UN General Assembly speech where he spoke of how the "future should not belong to those who slander the prophet Mohammed." Dear God in heaven, who is going to decide what constitutes slander of religious figures?! the UN? With bad-faith actors like the ones I've exhibited here in this press release?!

The US usually prefers to do, not say, and despite what Obama himself has said, the position at the UN is not to endorse anything that looks like it concedes a notion of blasphemy.

 

Peter Beinart Does Not Get it About Durban

Taking on so grand a topic as "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" is above my pay grade, so to speak, especially as a member of only disorganized Catholicism.

Even so, I must take on at least those parts of the debate I do know something about, namely Durban and human rights groups. Beinart's piece filled me with dismay, not only because it will likely further polarize and divide a community one depends on these days for upholding the values of Judeo-Christian civilization -- "the West" in the face of growing illiberalism and violent challenges -- but because once again, the facts are presented incorrectly on Zionism=Racism and the Durban World Conference Against Racism.

Jewish and non-Jewish liberals castigate Jewish conservatives and Zionists for saying incorrectly that "Zionism=Racism" was in the final declaration of the failed UN World Conference Against Racism. No, it was not literally, as in a Google word-search, in this document -- a factoid that some pounce upon with even malicious glee in their quest to prove Zionists out of touch and hidebound.

But here's the thing. As I've written before, Israel is still singled out alone among nations in this document . No other state is mentioned in this fashion as Israel is, in par. 63, where Palestinians are referenced under the rubric "Victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" and Israel is mentioned twice. Yes, antisemitism is also referenced, as is the need for security by the state of Israel -- all to the good. Yet Palestinians are still singled out in a way that implies they are victims of an alleged state-sponsored racism, and in a way that no other victims' group is. So the Zionists have a case on this point, and the liberals are wrong, unfortunately for their cause. Read the document, in order to understand why, if this is the political result, the UN has insufficient credibility to broker the peace.

It's important to remember the context of pre-911 2001. By that time, it wasn't an act of civic courage to keep "Zionism=Racism" out of an international UN document. That's because by that time, it was very much officially repudiated. The Soviet Union, which maintained Z=R as a staple of foreign policy propaganda, had collapsed in 1991, and Russia, a Permanent Council successor, dropped it, as did their allies. The old propagandistic UN resolution was in fact revoked in December 1991, the only such UN resolution to get such abrogation. Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General, said that the Zionism=Racism canard was a "low point" for the UN. So UN officials knew, years before Durban, that this propagandistic formula was no longer acceptable as "collective political will of states" and could no longer be defended, whatever their personal sympathies.

Very early in the Durban regional and international negotiation process, Zionism=Racism was dropped and the Organization of Islamic Conference knew not to push it, politically. But it crept in through the back door, and that back door came in the form of the sometimes state-sponsored chanting of the discredited NGO forum groups of the slogan "Israel=Apartheid State," and came in the form of the proposal to single out Israel as the only state mentioned in the document. The former was the reason for why a group of NGOs which I helped to lead disassociated themselves from the UN-sponsored NGO forum; the latter was the  reason for why the U.S. rightly walked out of the Durban conference. Both the dissident NGO position and the U.S. position were positions of liberalism and consistency of universality -- not a Zionist position, or "influenced by Zionists". If states with notorious state-sponsored racist practices were going to get a pass in this document (Chechens, Bahais, and Dalits could all make credible claims regarding state-sponsored racism), not to mention many country situations where state neglect rather than a conscious state policy were at issue, why single out Israel?

To her credit, High Commissioner Mary Robinson, convener of the World Conference Against Racism, kept Zionism=Racism out of the negotiation process -- but as I noted, this was the expected norm at the time, and not the chief political task for this conference, which was more subtle and complicated. What she did not do was keep the demonization of Israel out of the document, and keep out the sole singling out of Israel. Arguably, as a UN official with limited capacity to influence states, she could not do more on this. There is endless speculation about her own sympathies and her own role behind the scenes. What's operative, however is this: the states were responsible for negotiating this document, and the EU, upon whom rested the civic duty of keeping out the unfair obsession about Israel once the U.S. walked out, did not sufficiently rise to the challenge -- albeit getting in the concepts of Israel's security and antisemitism-- and other good actors -- a few East European or Latin American or other small states -- were too weak.

Final documents at the UN generally hew to the thematic; singling out Israel is a practice which mars a number of UN institutions, from the General Assembly to the Commission on the Status of Women to the UN Human Rights Council. This discredited, politicized practice, producing a storm of resolutions, committees, missions etc. every year appears not to have had a whit of influence on the Israeli government.

When I have this discussion with people who weren't in Durban about what is actually in the final document and what happened there, I find that very rarely, their claim that the Zionists are "wrong" or that the document was free of hate (it wasn't) are thereby remedied. Showing them these tedious facts of the paragraphs in the final document and explaining the political climate doesn't make an impact. And I suppose that's because this issue goes to the heart of the strife and division in the Jewish community in the U.S., but also to a recurring issue for liberals and the UN in general -- the idealistic idea to get achieved through international institutions what you cannot achieve at home in your own community or with your own government.

Defense of Mary Robinson Should Be Tempered with Conceding that Jewish Groups Have a Point

In a blog that is no longer accessible at Daily Kos, Jonathan Hutson (jhutson) wrote:

Re: "AIPAC’s accusatory press release (PDF) on Mary Robinson’s role misrepresents what she did and said in Durban. In a single sentence, AIPAC makes two incorrect statements, saying that the final conference text passed by participating states included a passage that Zionism equaled racism, and that she supported such a text. Neither is true. Thanks in part to her tireless work, and that of others, the final conference resolution of the participating states eliminated all references to such vicious sentiments. And after a forum of NGOs issued a declaration that equated Zionism with racism, Robinson stood resolutely before hundreds of people associated with the statement, and told them that their resolution was so unacceptable to her that she would not forward it to the conference of states."

This statement is NOT true itself and is very misleading itself. It's tendentious, and misrepresents what happened in Durban. I was there. As I've explained at length, it was more complicated than either the Jewish groups or now the human rights groups are portraying this.

AIPAC is *technically* incorrect in that they invoked the term "Zionism is racism" which indeed was not literally in the final document in Durban and was indeed removed --and not only by Mary Robinson's efforts -- leading up to the Durban conference in August 2001, 8 years ago.

But the concept and spirit of what "Zionist=Racism" *means* was brought in the back door, with Mary's consent and without her objection. And that was wrong on her part, even though she did other individually good things in and around Durban. This happened because she reached the limit of her political flexibility.

As I've explained repeatedly -- people need to become familiar with the line-by-line negotiations on these documents -- and I've parsed that here.

The Durban 1 document singles out only Israel for condemnation, as if only Israel alone among all horrible country situations in the world was worthy of international scrutiny and reaction. That was wrong.

The Durban 1 document then put in a rubric called "victims of racism" and stated "We are concerned about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation" -- and thereby stuck the Palestinians under a topic making them appear a victim of state racism -- again, along among country situations mentioned. That fed the Israel-apartheid meme and that was wrong. That this paragraph also balances a rightful concern anyone should have about the plight of the Palestinian people under occupation with a nod to Israel's need for security (i.e. from terrorists, which is not explicitly stated) doesn't therefore sanitize the Durban document from vicious Z=R vestiges. In fact, they are still riddled into the document and more importantly, into the entire follow-up process which continues to spin out tendentious exercises like the "defamation of religions" gambit that the Islamic countries are using to prevent any criticizing of their theocratic states.

By Fisking on this and being literalist about what the Jewish groups are saying that is "technically wrong", I believe human rights defenders as well as those chosing leftist blogs for this defense of Mary Robinson are leaving themselves a wide-open, glaring vulnerability to themselves when someone -- as I will, and many others will -- say -- but why can't you condemn the singling out of Israel? But why are you incorrectly and tendentiously portraying Israel as guilty of apartheid-like state-sponsored racism? Israel shouldn't be singled out; more people have died in Chechnya or Sudan in the space of a year than ever have been killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Numerous conflicts around the world from the DRC to Afghanistan to Nigeria lead to hundreds of civilian deaths each month dwarfing the Gaza drama without 1/100th of Gaza's remedies for a solution.

Plenty of states have ugly state-sponsored policies against minorities -- the genocide in Sudan comes to mine -- or really well-documented cases of official neglect and complicity in racist movements -- like Russia. These types of situations were *not* mentioned in the Durban outcome documents and should have been listed -- or none mentioned at all -- or the countries that negotiated the document should have walked out. Which is what the U.S. and Israel did in Durban 1, and a number of other countries did for Durban 2 including Canada and Australia.

THAT is the problem and THAT is what Mary Robinson did not and does not grapple with. It would cost her nothing but the angry hate of a few extreme Palestinian groups that she already got for not taking the NGO document if she would condemn the Durban outcome. But she had too much politically at stake trying to portray it to Africans and the third world as a success of her career to take that simple step.

Many people have their own heavily blogged opinions about what they think Israel is guilty of, or their not-so-suppressed private opinions that rise to the surface with the energy and animus that this issue has incited among some. Yet even Mary Robinson doesn't accuse Israel of state-sponsored apartheid or racism as an institutional device.

I think the way to have handled this ideally would be not to enter the political fray. But if you do, you simply must say "Even though the right-wing Jewish groups technically got it wrong, there are some troublesome ways in which obsession with, and demonization of Israel did occur in the Durban documents and we sympathize with those concerns. Mary Robinson did what she could to mitigate some of this but did not go far enough. The document outcomes should be condemned, even if there are some useful aspects of Durban that can be invoked to fight racism." It would be a simple qualifying remark that would a) be true and b) not pit human rights groups so adamantly against Jewish groups which actually *do* have a point, even though some of them are hysterical about Mary.

A key reason they can get hysterical about Mary and Human Rights Watch -- and soon Physicians for Human Rights -- is that this simple accurate and truthful concession about the wrongfulness of Durban isn't being made. It can easily be made, and I hope it *will* be made before this is all through.

The final document did NOT remove all references to vicious sentiments. Far from it. It left them in, in the form of singling out Israel and putting Palestinians under the rubric of racism specifically. I've explained this in detail in my blog earlier this year.

The Daily Kos blog also completely misrepresents Mary Robinson's refusal to take the NGO document. Yes, she did refuse. But it's not accurate to say she "got up in front of hundreds of people" as if that implies she robustly condemned the contents of the statement to the public and the press -- which is what some of us did there and that's why we understand the difference. She merely refused to accept the document at the morning OHCHR briefing as a bureaucratic measure. That's great; that's grand. It is not a condemnation of the NGO forum, however, nor is it addressing the spirit of Z=R in the final document -- which then was all reiterated in Durban 2.

The Obama administration did not go to Durban 2, and did not re-engage, not because they were "under pressure from the Zionist/Israeli lobby/Jewish groups" of the U.S. They didn't go because the Durban 2 was still unacceptable as an international document, reaffirming 1 in 2 meant that Israel was singled out, and put in a bracket as state-sponsored racism.

Human rights groups should agree with the reasons why the Obama administration did not sign Durban 2. They could disagree that Obama should have gone anyway and tried to get a better document (my position). They could applaud the decision of Mary Robinson to get a medal of freedom, given all her work for freedom over the years in many difficult places. They should not condemn the opinion of Jewish groups who express their own disatisfaction with Mary Robinson's role in the Middle East citing many contentious incidents unless they are willing to get into a wrangle on each and every incident -- and certainly they have to concede to the Jewish groups that they have a point about the spirit of Z=R not being eliminated truly.

To start chiming in with the leftist blogs on hate of the conservative Jewish lobby in the U.S. is as wrong as their condemning Mary Robinson for the medal. That the Jewish lobbyists made a technically incorrect statement about Z=R doesn't make it more noble to bash them, and the malicious fury with which some are doing this is the very reason why people in the Jewish community feel that anti-Israel invective verges on antisemitism. Criticism of the Jewish lobbyists if it must be made must be tempered  with a forthright acknowledgement that it is WRONG to single out Israel out of all the countries of the world in an international conference document like this and that the UN has proven time and again that it is a tendentious and malicious atmosphere to be trying to resolve the Middle East conflict precisely because it has institutionalized an imbalanced approach constantly singling out Israel, a democratic state under the rule of law, and ignoring Palestinian suicide bombers and the authoritarian Islamic states that support them.

There are a numbe of unhappy consequences that will come of this, and I will not get into all of them now, but I have to say one obvious consequence is that we can see it is correct to call human rights groups "lobbyists" and ask them to be registered as such and to make that an issue in examination of whether they are suitable for certain offices. There is nothing wrong with being a lobbyist. This is America. This is how our system works. But you can't hide the work of lobbying under the umbrella of more narrowly-constructed pure human rights work.

In Defense -- and Criticism -- of Mary Robinson

We thought we had put the contentious Durban conference to bed for awhile at least, but here it comes rearing its ugly head in President Obama's decision to award Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A number of Jewish groups, AIPAC and some congressmen like Eliot Engel have denounced the president's selection, angered by what they see as Mary Robinson's anti-Israel bias and mismanagement of the World Conference Against Racism -- which indeed did turn at times into an antisemitic spectacle and an anti-Israel hate fest that should never have been allowed under UN auspices. I was there, I saw it.

In part, I'm going to come to Mary Robinson's defense, but in part criticize her and her supporters for what happened at Durban. There is very little space for doing this in a nasty, polarized debate which pits international human rights groups against Jewish groups and friends of Israel, and pits some mainstream and Jewish press against various leftwing bloggers and new media commentators. Yes, Mary Robinson courageously stood up to some antisemites in Durban and should be applauded. But that the Durban conference came to the awful pass it did is due to her refusal to nip the growing debacle in the bud far earlier in the prepcom process, both with the states of the Organization of Islamic Conference and bad actors like Cuba, as well as in liaison with NGOs  -- when hostile Arab League states and their supporters and leftist sectarians derailing the process should have been faced down far earlier and more often.

I am not sure of the process by which Mary Robinson was selected for the award, but my sense is that it is an effort to deflect criticism of the United States coming furiously from some leftist groups for the U.S. decision not to participate in the follow-up review conference in Durban in April. It also comes from some members of the international human rights circuit (more on that below) who want to empower their clan with such honorifics. If I were asked to make up a list of people who deserve this award, quite frankly, I would not include Mary Robinson simply because I think it is an award that is better given to those who exhibited personal courage in the face of oppressive circumstances in their country, not UN officials who are sometimes forced to compromise for what they perceive as higher goals (and for which sometimes, they are proven wrong, as Mary Robinson has). Having said that, I would never advocate withdrawing such an award once announced, which is to become like Stalin or Ceaucescu pulling medals and doctoral degrees when an individual becomes politically incorrect. At the end of the day, the Obama Administration chose Mary Robinson because they felt she was one of their own, and if you do not like that choice, you have the electoral process to change it.

First, praise for Mrs. Robinson. If I had to sum up the accomplishments of Mary Robinson, the first woman president of Ireland, I would say this: she stood up to all the great powers, and advocated on behalf of the victims of massive human rights violations. During her tenure, with her office, unlike other parts of the UN mired in paralysis and exigencies of politics and "geographical distribution," she actively took on the Chechnya  issue with the Russians; the Tibet issue with the Chinese; the Guantanamo and Iraq issues with the Americans; East Timor with the Indonesians; and many other situations around the world to which she brought hope by invigorating her office's field missions and supporting the special procedures, the investigations into human rights abuses.

I vividly remember an early meeting with Mary Robinson, who was new to the UN bureaucracy, when a group of us eager human rights groups gathered around her with great hope and encouragement but also with pressure to do more. "It's as if I have 192 bosses," she said wearily, referencing all the members of the UN in the General Assembly. "And many don't wish me well." I remember remarking that as High Commissioner, she should see that her office remained "high," serving as a conscience above the fray. I think she mainly tried, but in the face of a constant stream of unhappy diplomats wearing out her waiting room with complaints of bias or neglect or incitement, sometimes she  punted. 

ACTIONS TO MARY ROBINSON'S CREDIT

In Durban, when we all faced the overwhelming challenges of a raucous and out-of-control meeting in a large cricket stadium (note to world leaders: don't hold events in stadiums, people are never at their best in them), I can say that here, too, Mary showed leadership, and did a number of good deeds:

o Taking the stage at the NGO Forum after a very long-winded and tendentious Fidel Castro who incited the masses to wave hateful flags printed "Cuba Si, Yanqi Non!", Mary Robinson was actually booed by the extreme leftists in the crowd who felt she hadn't done "enough" for Palestine. When she mentioned the racism against blacks in Cuba, some of them went absolutely livid and tried to shout her off the stage. She held her ground and continued her speech.

o When the NGO forum produced its odious document singling out Israel for special attack and repeating hateful and wrongful claims about "an apartheid state" and other invective, she simply refused to accept it. That enraged the hard left, too, but she didn't waver.

o She made an effort to hear all sides of the conflict and told Jewish groups that she felt their pain, even saying in one meeting "I am a Jew," in a statement of solidarity and condemnation of the antisemitic literature and posters littering the Durban grounds.

o After the Durban conference for some years, she continued to meet with both local and international groups, human rights, solidarity, and Jewish groups, hearing their complaints and trying to address concerns, and certainly took the message that Durban II was headed for a road wreck and did what she could there

Yet in all of these courageous and caring actions, there was a kind of shortfall or gap that many found major in retrospective, and which I was troubled about then, as now. And that was the inability to take on the hard left and the sectarians frontally, invoking universal human values, while taking the visible political actions needed to avoid conferring legitimacy on those whose platform was not the liberal value of human rights, but sectarian secular or theocratic ideologies.

To understand what I'm talking about, you'll have to get into the weeds a bit, hear some vignettes from Durban and contemplate some difficult documents, and see the larger philosophical points. I warn you in advance the text is long but keep Googling if you would rather find more dramatic invective.

Soon, Soon, the Durban Debacle Will Be Over!

This time next month, the dreadful Durban Review Conference will be over -- and we should all breathe a sigh of relief, as the contentious and contemptible process has not done a thing to really combat racism around the world, but has only fueled it further. The U.S. walked out of the conference in 2001, along with Israel; currently, Canada, Italy and Israel are boycotting the review conference and the U.S. is still refraining from participation, despite negotiating briefly for a time last month to improve the draft final document.

I marvel at how the left keeps scrambling to defend this tainted process -- no, actually I don't marvel, because I was there at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001, so I remember standing with a Russian anti-racism activist in a cricket field with a huge, rabid crowd chanting "Cuba Si, Yanqi Non!" who were disgustingly cheering Fidel Castro. Minutes later, they were jeering then-UN High Commissioner Human Rights Mary Robinson for daring to mention racism in Cuba among other scourges of racism around the world -- and from this and many other sordid scenes in Durban I understood just how deeply entrenched the old Soviet line was among its pupils, and of course the ANC-inspired NGOs who ran the discredited NGO forum.

For two years, a group of NGOs who protested all the ideological shenanigans at Durban have tried to keep it kosher, so to speak, as I have written, working to get out all the anti-Israel hate speech that so marred the original conference, and trying to mitigate new Arab League inspired interventions, such as demands to incorporate a global blasphemy law into UN treaties.

Now, there's a frantic last-ditch attempt to get the Obama Administration on board, and the first African-American president himself to attend the UN meeting. I've always thought it would be great if President Obama attended, too -- but for only one purpose, which would be to repudiate the bad elements of the document now being negotiated, to demonstrate really strong liberal leadership against the erosion of human rights values by the hard left in the Third World, and withstand the efforts of conservative Islamic states to impose barriers on criticism of religion through international law. Such American leadership has been missing all along -- the U.S. shrank from any such ideological confrontation, preferring to walk out of the conference in 2001, and only half-heartedly negotiating for a time to improve the text now -- leading some EU members to dismiss the U.S. as "unable to take yes for an answer".

The High Commissioner's Office is now trying desperately to get more nuanced coverage of the conference, saying there have been "misrepresentations" in the media -- and frankly to spin the process in a better light to try to allay fears that the review will turn into a "hate fest". But such claims simply can't fly, when you can easily pull up the 2001 final document itself and take a look at the problem.

The claim is made that there is no more anti-Israel or anti-semitic speech in the draft  final document now. True enough -- thanks to persistent negotiating by the EU -- but the document still affirms the 2001 final declaration. THAT document in turn most certainly does contain what Jewish groups -- and any persons concerned about balance and fairness in international processes -- see as an insidious effort to bring the hated "Zionism=Racism" canard, finally repudiated by the UN, back again through the back door.

The current draft of 2009 says this, among other affirmations of the 2001 document:

Joining together in a spirit of renewed political will and commitment to universal equality, justice and dignity, we salute the memory of all victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance all over the world and solemnly adopt the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action...

Referrals Shouldn't Lead To Deferrals

16 relief organizations have been closed or expelled. Photo (c) by IRIN.

Despite news reports, it's not yet clear whether the African Union delegation that wants to lobby the Security Council on invocation of Article 16 is going to arrive and talk to the SC soon or not. (Article 16 involves a call to defer the indictment of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, who has been charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court).

Meanwhile, it's useful to remember that the appeal to the Security Council to apply Article 16 is a kind of absurdity, when directed at the body that...referred the matter of Darfur to the ICC in the first place!

If the UN Security Council collectively found that the situation, back in 2005, had risen to the threshold to require investigation against crimes against humanity, and the ICC did its work, and then indicted even a sitting head of state, you can't very well then have buyer's remorse and say, "Oh, we shouldn't really have referred this case to you -- bad call".

Let's go back to 2005 and see how the votes went, shall we? Interestingly, on this terribly divisive matter, in this often very divided council, just four years ago, Resolution 1593 (2005), on referring Darfur to the ICC, garnered  11 votes in favour and 4 abstentions, with no votes opposed.

Algeria, Brazil, China, United States abstained. The U.S., as we know, opposed the ICC as an institution at the time but didn't oppose the referral. China doesn't like interference in internal affairs, especially of allies where it has considerable petroleum exploration, loans, and arms sales, but it abstained out of deference to the issue. I don't recall why Brazil, which probably thinks better of it now, abstained. Algeria is a member of the AU and often invokes the "Africa for Africans" mantra that doesn't like the "international community," which it perceives as Western/Northern dominated, deciding things about Africa.

Denmark, Philippines, Japan, United Kingdom, Argentina, France, Greece, United Republic of Tanzania, Romania, Russian Federation, Benin all voted yes. Yes. Today, Russia hasn't been very helpful on this and hasn't sought to persuade its allies about the indictment or put pressure on Sudan, which buys Antonovs and other vehicles and weapons from Russian arms dealers.

So let's look at this again: AU members Benin and Tanzania both took a position "for" referral of Darfur to the ICC, and AU member Algeria abstained at least to be helpful so it could pass. That's three AU members who are now essentially going against their prior vote, although I believe Tanzania is not part of the problem on Art. 16, but may be part of the solution.

In any event, in response to the AU invocation of Art. 16, it's useful to explain:

But three AU members voted or abstained back when the SC referred the matter of Darfur to the ICC.

The SC resolution passed by a wide majority of those in favour, with none opposed and 4 abstentions. Therefore, be consistent and don't go back on your word of 2005; more to the point, recognize that your argumentation is hollow, if the SC once referred; referrals shouldn't contain the possibility of deferrals, and that was never what the deferral was intended for. And waiting another year, when the SC had already waited some time before even putting Darfur on the agenda in 2005, will not improve the situation.

The Benin ambassador's explanation of his vote after the vote is particularly useful to resonate today:

JOEL ADECHI (Benin) said the vote was a major event in the context of the international community’s attempts to ensure there was no impunity for violations of international humanitarian law in the past decade. 

Benin had voted in favour of the resolution because it was party to the Rome Statute and also because the worsening of the situation in Darfur meant that the Council must take action to end the suffering of the civilians, ending impunity by providing impartial justice. 

Benin had also voted in favour out of respect for human dignity and the right to life.  The African Union recognized that the international community had a responsibility to protect civilians when they were not protected by their own governments.  The resolution must help them to achieve their legitimate dream of an end to their suffering and enable them to look ahead to the future with serenity.

Toward a New International Movement of Conscience

 

Washington Post video of rally in support of Bashir.

The Sudanese government's decision to expel 13 humanitarian agencies and keep expelling and threatening other groups confronts the international human rights movement with a new and nasty reality. In all the speculation about what was going to happen after the ICC indictment, this particular scenario -- expulsion of all the Western humanitarian relief operations -- wasn't really contemplated. People took more or less at face value the government of Sudan's pledge to distinguish between the ICC and the UN and non-governmental organizations. The theory was that the GOS might mount some kind of attacks on humanitarians, or feign to stand by while outraged rent-a-crowds demonstrated or even grew violent, or would chase rebels into camps, catching unarmed humanitarian workers and civilians in the crossfire.

That Bashir would retaliate in this particular way despite UN protest, essentially halting the bulk of aid to more than 4 million needy people, including 2.7 internally displaced, wasn't contemplated but is now likely an irreversible reality. The effect might not be immediately dramatic, although water will start running out in some camps this week. The Darfurians are extraordinarily resourceful at survival, the GOS has always been good at keeping out journalists who try to record their struggles, and the massive deaths are likely to go on as they always have -- slower, due to disease and starvation rather than armed clashes as in the Rwandan genocide. This will make it harder to keep a sustained attention on the outrage.

All these developments put us in front of an awful dilemma. We are used to having governments and UN member states tell us that in order to achieve or maintain peace accords, justice might have to be delayed, as we were often told during negotiations for the Dayton Accords or peace talks in Sierra Leone or in the years of efforts to get the North-South peace in Sudan. This "peace without justice" is a frequent scenario to which some governments and humanitarian groups are resigned. We're also getting more used to hearing that justice might have to be delayed in order to prosecute war successfully, too, as in Afghanistan, where human rights concerns and accumulated injustices are getting short shrift while NATO and the U.S. concentrate on the war.

But Bashir's gambit represents an innovative horror -- not just justice, not just implementation of human rights have to be delayed, but humanitarian aid itself must be held hostage to "peace". The ICC essentially pursues its mandate, declaring crimes against humanity; now we are seeing what a sitting indicated head of state will do -- pressure the Security Council, which referred the case, and the whole international community to delay justice in order to buy not even peace, but just basic sustenance.

This is a pretty intolerable formula, and the international community might be forgiven if it blinks on this, but so far, what we're seeing instead is a reaching for the same ineffectual remedies that were debated 4 years ago when the genocidal actions began -- a "no fly zone" which in fact no Western power is prepared to maintain. (Usually what happens in this debate is all eyes turn to the French Foreign Legion based in Chad, where EUFOR is still struggling and was supposed to leave this month, but the French simply have never shown interest in reviving invidious colonialist comparisons or leading the West into yet another battle with an Islamic country).

And that indeed is what it means, starting another front in the war on fundamentalist Islam, when we are already bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. A government that was willing to starve out millions of people isn't going to be fazed by an ineffectual half-hearted war attempt, and unfortunately, it has friends in this, chiefly China and Russia, but also leaders in the African Union, Egypt and Libya, and the other members of the Organization of Islamic Conference, Saudi Arabia and other Arab powers -- powers the U.S. placates to "get things done" on other fronts, like preventing Iran's nuclear capacity from turning deadly.

"For Our Freedom and Yours"

"For our freedom and yours".

Bush is demanding that Russia remove troops, and sending in military planes with humanitarian aid. This has sparked concern from humanitarian groups who try to keep a separation between military action and the delivery of humanitarian aid, to keep the humanitarian space open.

This isn't an abstract issue; today brought the tragic news of the murder of 4 aid workers in Afghanistan, an American, a Canadian, a Brit, and their Afghan driver, all of whom worked for International Rescue Committee on children's education. Apparently it is the worst security incident the NGO has faced in its history, after working in Afghanistan for 25 years, and a vivid sign of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. The Taliban takes responsibility for the deliberate attack targeting foreigners, and a Taliban spokesman even claims falsely that the women were "military" and that is why they were shot -- indicative of precisely this sensitive issue of trying to keep these distinctions as literally a matter of life and death, especially in a context where they are deliberately misrepresented.

The issue of just what kind of aid the U.S. has given Georgia is now under much scrutiny. The BBC says, "It [the U.S.] has already helped revamp and re-train Georgian forces, provided more sophisticated military equipment and updated bases to meet Nato standards" -- actions the BBC says may have caused Russia to "re-assert its authority in the region in the first place" -- an analysis that strikes me as heavily Western-centric and self-flagellating about a situation where Russia has been dominating the entire region and its oil routes, quite apart from any U.S. meddling, which is hard to characterize as significant.

Ken Anderson has a very long, rant about the New York Times's C.J. Chivers following the "blame America first" with a description of U.S. involvement in providing miltiary aid to Georgia:

"The risks were intensified by the fact that the United States did not merely encourage Georgia’s young democracy, it helped militarize the weak Georgian state."

The End of the Era of Transition

Daniel Kimmage, the senior geopolitical correspondent for Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, has written a seminal piece,Toward a New Paradigm for the Post-Soviet Petro-States. Everyone interested in the future of liberal democracy in international affairs should be reading and thinking about.

Basically, Daniel calls it clearly:  the former Soviet states aren't transiting anywhere from communism: they're done now, and they've landed on the square called "authoritarianism"on the great board game of life.

Of course, those of us who used to work in these countries, long before the era of the TTD Seminars ("transition to democracy" sessions led by $500-a-day consultants in high-priced hotel rooms), have always said they weren't transiting anywhere fast because the same people tended to be in charge, and the people with whom the TTD crowd were holding their chalk talks had no intention of changing, or replacing themselves.

As Daniel acidly tells us, "democratic reform in all four countries [Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan] requires an exceptionally powerful, and perhaps uniquely curved, magnifying glass to be seen" -- the kind of loupe, I could add, that energy-eager Western leaders have been wearing on a golden chain around their necks these days...