quote: WASHINGTON - The State Department denounced on Tuesday the selection of Cuba and Zimbabwe for a panel that will decide on the agenda for a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission next month.
"The United States believes that countries that routinely and systematically violate the rights of their citizens should not be selected to review the human rights performance of other countries," State Department press office Tom Casey said.
Besides Cuba and Zimbabwe, the other members of the so-called "Working Group on Situations" are Hungary, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.
"Despite the inappropriate membership of Cuba and Zimbabwe, we look for the working group to conduct its procedures in a balanced and transparent manner," Casey said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) listed Cuba and Zimbabwe among six "outposts of tyranny" during her Senate confirmation hearing (news - web sites) last month.
Casey's statement offered no criticism of the selection of Saudi Arabia, an authoritarian monarchy. Officials note, however, that a reform movement is under way in the country, highlighted by village elections set for this week.
The working group passes judgment on the admissibility of complaints intended for consideration by the 53-member commission. The group meets every March at its headquarters in Geneva.
Cuba was selected to the working group based on the support it received from fellow Latin American countries. The Cuban Foreign Ministry web site said Argentina proposed Cuba for membership on the panel.
The show of hemispheric support for Cuba signaled another setback for the administration in its campaign to isolate Cuba internationally.
Last week, ignoring Bush administration objections, the European Union (news - web sites) lifted a suspension on high-level contacts with Cuba that was imposed after a crackdown on dissidents in 2003.
Cuba's official news agency, AIN, said that among the cases being considered by the commission this year are "the well documented atrocities committed by the U.S. government in Iraq (news - web sites), particularly the brutal procedures used against prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail and at the prison camp set up at the illegal U.S. naval base located in the eastern Cuban province of Guantanamo."
Jose Miguel Vivanco, head of the America's Division of Human Rights Watch, reacted sharply to Cuba's selection to the panel.
"I think it's a scandal," Vivanco said. A country with "such a poor record on human rights" should not be rewarded in this way," he said.
First Libya is chosen to head the Human Rights commission now Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia get to choose which issues will be dealt with in future human rights commissions. So instead of dealing with whether women should have equality or how executing political opponents undermines democracy we'll be hearing about how the United States is a totalitarian regime.
If we're not going to resign from the UN can we at least kick them out of New York? Its bad enough that a bunch of dictatorships accuse the world's oldest democracy of committing atrocities, but why do they get to do it on our soil?
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quote:The United States believes that countries that routinely and systematically violate the rights of their citizens should not be selected to review the human rights performance of other countries
Yeah. Those dang Cubans. I've heard all about what they do down there in Guantanamo.
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posted
I agree it is stupid to these nations leading the agenda...
But the UN is too important for the human race to abandon it. Besides...if we did leave the UN, as OSC pointed out once before, it would automatically become an anti-American club. Can't afford that.
[ February 08, 2005, 05:27 PM: Message edited by: Telperion the Silver ]
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Not to sound like a total nay-sayer, I agree with Telp.
But it's also useful to point out that America is one of the few countries that never ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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Well since Cuba doesn't control Guantanamo its hard for them to suppress their dissedents there.
You mean its not an anti-American club? A majority of the countries in the UN are dictatorships and finally those dictatorships are realizing the power of using democracy to control the UN.
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posted
sigh... How is a dictatorship gonna point out flaws in the FirstWorld without having their own citizens saying "They're right! And our own government is doing even worse here."?
posted
The UN ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No one else has.
quote:Since the Declaration is not legally binding technically, there are no signatories to the Declaration. Instead, the Declaration was ratified through a proclamation by the General Assembly on December 10, 1948 with a count of 48 votes to none with only 8 abstentions. This was considered a triumph as the vote unified very diverse, even conflicting political regimes.
quote:Consequently, on December 10, 1948, after lengthy debate, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration by a vote of 48 yes, none opposed and eight abstentions (six Stalinist states and satellites plus Saudi Arabia and South Africa). For the first time in history, governments accepted a set of human rights standards for the entire world.
posted
Do you actually know what the situation in Guantanamo is because your comments thus far make no sense.
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posted
I thought she was being hilariously sarcastic. Inferring that we, the US, really have no right to claim the moral high ground and oppose nations like Cuba being on the Human Rights committee, considering what we are doing down at Gitmo.
Could just be me, though. (Though if that's what you were doing Annie, I nearly died laughing. If not, I have a weird interpretation and it still made me laugh.)
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posted
First she implied that Cuba didn't commit human rights violations simply because of what America has done in her opinion. Next, she falsely claimed (I won't say lied) that the US was one of the few countries that didn't ratify the UHRD. Finally, she appeared to claim that the United States was suppressing Cuban dissidents in Guantanamo. If you find that hilarious than I don't think much of your sense of humor.
I would like to point out that I never claimed that the U.S. should be on UN HR Commission, just that countries like Libya, Cuba, and Zimbabwe should be left off.
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posted
My first post wasn't about Cuba at all. I was being sarcastic, as Kayla inferred.
My information on the declaration of human rights was wrong; thanks Dag for the links. My French professor told me the US wouldn't ratify it because of the death penalty article.
Thanks for setting me straight.
My third comment was another snarky remark about the reports of US prisoner abuse.
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Newfoundlogic - who would you accept to be on the panel?
(Given that you seem to have accepted Annie's point about the US - which, incidentally, I found pretty funny also.)
Is there any country whose human rights record you would consider acceptable?
Do you think that only letting countries with such a record be on the panel is a workable solution for an organisation that is meant to be global?
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posted
Incidentally, while the US did vote in favour of the UDHR, it has not ratified a couple of notable human rights conventions.
The most obvious example is the Convention on the Rights of the Child - the US is one of two governments (the other is Somalia) not to ratify this convention. And there are no plans to do so.
{Edit: It is generally accepted there are two reasons for this - the provision against children in the military and the provision against the death penalty for children. So Annie, maybe this is what your professor was thinking of.}
posted
I'm not a country and personally have no interest in affiliating with an organization that takes a staunchly anti-American and anti-Israeli stance.
I didn't accept any points made about the U.S., I just don't think there has to be reason for this to break down into a partisan debate. I've already stated that Saudi Arabia isn't exceptable either despite the Bush's administation's obvious reluctance to include them in their "violator" list.
I would take any country that is democratic and isn't known for its human rights abuses. Non-Amercian countries could include Austrailia, New Zealand, Japan, most of Europe, Israel, most of the Americas, and others. I'm saying the countries have to pro-American, I just don't find Libya, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, and Cuba to be huge steps up from Iran or the Taliban.
I don't think we can afford to give an organization controlled by dictatorships any real power regardless of the organization's intent.
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posted
You know that the Human Rights Commission doesn't control the UN, right?
All the major decisions either have to go through the General Assembly (all countries have one vote) and anything to do with security or military issues through the Security Council (US has veto, along with France, Russia, China and the UK).
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Yes I know the HRC doesn't control the UN, that's why it reflects badly on the UN when they choose such countries to head the Human Rights commission. Does it not bother you at all that Saudi Arabia will get to decide whether women should have freedoms that men take for granted?
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"I would take any country that is democratic and isn't known for its human rights abuses."
Why is it necessary for a country to be democratic in order to be concerned with human rights?
"Does it not bother you at all that Saudi Arabia will get to decide whether women should have freedoms that men take for granted?"
Sure, it does. But you know what? George Bush is currently representing me and my country to the world. He's the symbol of our nation, the shining beacon of freedom and liberty to the world. George Bush. And people voted for him.
Now, I could say that this only proves that the American electoral system is hopelessly broken, and that we clearly should scrap the whole thing because we're electing people who make a mockery out of the principles of their position. Or I could accept that, for whatever reason, the people who have been empowered to select him as their representative had their own reasons for doing so, even if I disagree with those reasons, and choose to work to change their minds.
quote: Why is it necessary for a country to be democratic in order to be concerned with human rights?
I didn't say that, that's why there is an "and" the sentence. All the same, I'm in favor of limiting the power of dictatorships.
quote: Or I could accept that, for whatever reason, the people who have been empowered to select him as their representative had their own reasons for doing so, even if I disagree with those reasons, and choose to work to change their minds.
The difference is that the people who elected George Bush are citizens taking part in a democratic process while the people who "elected" the aforementioned countries are dictators and monarchs with no accountability to their constituencies. The equivalent would be saying that you were satisfied with the electoral process of an election that included only the participation of landed white men.
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quote: The difference is that the people who elected George Bush are citizens taking part in a democratic process while the people who "elected" the aforementioned countries are dictators and monarchs with no accountability to their constituencies.
Unless you honestly believe that electors still vote their conscience, rather than their party, this is not a valid objection. In the same way that Americans democratically elect their representative, the member nations of the U.N. democratically elect the members of its various committees. It's also worth noting that U.N. representatives are no less accountable to their "constituencies" than electors are to their states.
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posted
If you're referring to the Electoral College, the electors are just a technicality while the people actually decide who becomes president.
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It's a sad day when we can not be proud of our own human rights record.
However, all that being said, these are absurd choices to be on any sort of human rights commission, and they do indicate that the UN is a doublespeak kind of body.
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quote: If you're referring to the Electoral College, the electors are just a technicality while the people actually decide who becomes president.
Nope. There is no legally binding restriction on an elector's vote. They don't have to vote based on the will of "the people." That is in fact the whole point of an elector. That we have failed to realize the full potential of this system is one of the greatest failures of modern representative democracy, in my opinion; I have often thought that we would be better off electing local electors rather than national politicians, and simply leaving national politicians off the ballot altogether. (But there are of course problems with that approach, too, so YMMV.)
That said, the UN closely mirrors our own electoral college; the leadership of a state selects a representative who then represents the interests of that state before a larger body. If a nation of questionable "character" gets elected to a committee, it is because the leadership of several states chose to put forward representatives who, for whatever reason, decided to elect that nation to the committee.
This is fundamentally democratic, actually. In fact, your primary complaint -- that little despotic countries are ganging up against the United States, which is self-evidently better than all those pissants -- is as elitist as it comes.
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posted
Hmm.... funnily enough, Australia is becoming quite well known for our own little set of human rights abuses. Particularly our treatment of refugees, which is woeful.
I don't think that either Australia or the US has the moral high ground at the moment when it comes to human rights. Just because we can say that we infringe human rights on a smaller scale isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.
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Tom, at the very least we elect electors democratically while the governments of Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia are not. Fidel Castro telling his nephew or friend to represent Cuba in the UN is not democratic in any way.
I can't say I know much about Australia's refugee problem, but I'm fairly confident it doesn't compare to the previously mentioned countries do.
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"I don't think that either Australia or the US has the moral high ground at the moment when it comes to human rights."
Well, in all fairness, both countries are running into a problem that eventually confronts all good people: if you choose to act against evil, you will always run the danger of falling into evil yourself. Because the instant you choose to put yourself in opposition to something else, you are forced to sacrifice a matter of principle.
Basically, you can choose to be ineffective and principled, or slightly more effective and slightly less principled. I think both Australia and the USA are excellent examples of countries that have decided -- in Australia's case, fairly recently -- to take the latter path.
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"Fidel Castro telling his nephew or friend to represent Cuba in the UN is not democratic in any way."
And that is exactly the way that we select our UN Ambassador, actually. When was the last time you voted for one?
Your issue, then, is not the way the UN representatives are chosen, but rather the way the people who choose them are chosen. In other words, you believe there are certain countries who, by virtue of their systems of government, do not deserve a voice -- and especially not a vote -- in an assembly of nations.
This is not necessarily a flawed position, mind you. It was certainly the original idea behind the League of Nations, for example. And people have often proposed establishing some kind of "standard" that a country would have to meet before being granted a seat in the UN. It's like a poll tax, really.
posted
The difference as you well know is that we have checks and balances and before George sends Jeb to Indonesia George had to be elected. When was Cuba's last election?
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posted
As I said, your quibble is over the selection of the people who select the representatives. In other words, it's your position that only countries with certain forms of government that meet your approval should be allowed to vote in the UN.
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quote:Does it not bother you at all that Saudi Arabia will get to decide whether women should have freedoms that men take for granted?
Maybe. I think it important, though, that since a sizeable portion of the world's nations are muslim that they be given some sort of representation on committees that are deciding where religious tenets stop and human rights begin.
I would be less comfortable if France, Britain, and the US started handing out decisions on "women's rights" that had the same impact on muslim women that France's public secularization has had.
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posted
My point is that we should stop paying attention to an organization controlled by dictators and monarchs and that such an organization which has the purpose of promoting human rights is inherently incompetent at achieving that goal. Human rights is obviously not the UN's only purpose, but it is a major one, all the more so after the fall of the Soviet Union.
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And I would say that I'm not convinced that the UN is "controlled" by anybody. We do have a veto vote, which is more than most nations can say.
Undemocratic? Perhaps. But I wouldn't say it's controlled by dictators. There really aren't many left these days.
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posted
When a majority of the UN countries are ruled by some form of government that is neither a republic nor a democracy I would say it is controlled by dictators. No we do not have a veto. All we have is a veto, along with China, the UK, Russia, and France over UN Security Council resolutions.
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quote: Maybe. I think it important, though, that since a sizeable portion of the world's nations are muslim that they be given some sort of representation on committees that are deciding where religious tenets stop and human rights begin.
I think that is a very interesting and valid point Annie.
And nfl - the veto vote (along with the other 4 nations) is so important. Security Council resolutions are the big ones. The Human Rights Commission can only make reports and recommendations.
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posted
Incidentally, I believe part of the reasoning for the selection of countries such as Cuba and Zimbabwe is to encourage human rights reform through participation.
The UN tends to believe that change and reform is most effective if a country has the impetus to instigate such change itself, rather than have it imposed on it by other (Read: Western and probably US-dominated) countries.
This is particularly true in the case of non-Christian countries. The sentiment in a lot of these states is that ideals forced upon them are Western ideals, and not relevant to their culture.
A more effective way of bringing about human rights reform is involving these countries at an international level, so they feel that they have determination over the ideals and rights.
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"When a majority of the UN countries are ruled by some form of government that is neither a republic nor a democracy I would say it is controlled by dictators."
As I said, you appear to believe that democracy should be a prerequisite for voting membership in the U.N.
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Who is in charge of distinguishing between rights, privileges, suggestions, and of course crimes against humanity or nature?
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posted
The U.S. is the largest contributor of money, troops, and arms to the U.N., but this doesn't give us the right to lord it over other countries and dictate which countries are assigned to specific committees. I agree that it's a farce that the countries mentioned are on the HRC, and the rest of the world knows it's a farce, but we have more important issues to deal with on the Security Council. Any decisions made by the HRC can be counter-acted by witholding funds from the program (similar to the famous move made by Bush early in his administration to stop funding the UN family planning program because in some rare cases it meant abortion).
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