As the UN Commission on Human Rights begins its final session in Geneva, Deaglán de Bréadún examines the prospects for its successor, the Human Rights Council
Politics is the art of the possible. That is why supporters of the new United Nations Human Rights Council are saying it was the best that could be wrung out of a protracted set of negotiations involving the most disparate and diverse group in existence: the nations of the earth.
The new body will be made up of 47 UN member states, due to be elected by secret ballot at the General Assembly in New York on May 9th. A minimum of 96 votes - more than half the total UN membership of 191 countries - is required for election. Ireland will not be a candidate on this occasion, having recently served two terms on the Commission on Human Rights, predecessor to the council. As a diplomatic source put it, standing again so soon would be "rather unseemly".
There was a row - one of several - over the rules for the election.
America's UN ambassador, the flamboyant neo-conservative ideologue John Bolton, wanted the minimum threshold for election set at two-thirds of the General Assembly membership present and voting, as originally proposed by secretary general Kofi Annan. Bolton's rationale was that this was the surest way of keeping the more outrageous human rights abusers off the council. He lost that one, but his opponents say that, in practice, the 96-vote minimum will amount to much the same thing and that there will be a two-term limit so that all members - including the objectionable ones - will at least have to take a break after six years.
If an index or "league table" of human rights abusers was to be drawn up, many would say that countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe should be high on the list. Yet those countries managed to get themselves elected to the Commission on Human Rights, and Libya even took over the chair in 2003.
Worse still, from Washington's viewpoint, was the fact that, in 2001, the US was voted off the commission. This was a very dramatic and public humiliation, especially since Sudan, widely seen as a major delinquent in human rights terms, was successful in the same election. Rubbing salt in the wound was the list of the other members, which included the likes of Algeria, Cuba, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam - none of them regarded as paragons of democratic virtue, and certainly not in Washington.
This lent added purpose to Bolton's mission. He received support from an unexpected quarter in the form of a New York Times editorial which condemned the entire exercise as a "shameful charade" and claimed that groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had "unwisely put their preference for multilateral consensus ahead of their duty to fight for the strongest possible human rights protection".
The Commission on Human Rights begins its final session in Geneva this afternoon. Few will mourn its passing or disagree with the assessment of the New York Times: "Some of the world's most abusive regimes have won seats on the Human Rights Commission and used them to insulate themselves from criticism." However, the Times also acknowledges that the record of the Bush administration itself has been "stained" by the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
When the vote to establish the Human Rights Council took place at the General Assembly, the US was severely isolated as it voted No, with only Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau for company, while 170 members voted Yes and Belarus, Iran and Venezuela abstained.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern welcomed the vote to establish the council. Ireland was deeply involved in negotiations for an agreed position among EU member states. This was one issue on which "old" and "new" Europe, as Donald Rumsfeld calls them, were of one voice, despite the traditional closeness between the US and the new member states to the east. As US opposition became more entrenched, there was what observers describe as a "wobble" from the British delegation. However, with the rest of the EU holding firm, Britain came back on board.
Whereas the commission met in Geneva once a year for six weeks, the new council will meet three times for a total of 10 weeks. The inaugural meeting takes place on June 19th, but in the meantime all eyes will be on the election of May 9th. Council seats have been allocated on a regional basis as follows: Latin America 8; Western Europe 7; Eastern Europe 6; Africa 13; Asia 13. This is another bone of contention with the US, which sees it as shifting the balance away from Western democracies: there were 10 Western European seats on the commission.
Already there are seven likely candidates for the Latin American bloc, including such bêtes noires of the Bush administration as Cuba and Venezuela.
In the Western European and others group, which includes the US, likely candidates include Britain, France and Switzerland, but the intentions of the Americans themselves remain unclear.
The final list of elected member states will tell a tale. Should a significant number of what UN critics call "thugocracies" feature on it, there will be strong adverse reaction in the US. Supporters of the new body point out that if elected members are deemed to be guilty of "gross and systematic violations of human rights", they can be expelled by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly. Critics say this will never happen in practice and that the bar has been set too low for membership and too high for expulsion.
One way or the other, we are going to hear a lot more of the UN Human Rights Council.
Deaglán de Bréadún is Foreign Affairs Correspondent