Which would be the ideal nation to run the UN Human Rights Council?
I know, let’s find the one nation that infringes every single human right going, and put them in charge, what could possibly go wrong with that? It sounds bizarre, but that is exactly what is now on the table. UN Watch reports the details …
UN Watch has learned from diplomatic sources, as confirmed by the Tribune de Genève, that Saudi Arabia, an elected member of the 47-nation Human Rights Council, is actively lobbying the Asian group to be elected as president for 2016. Germany currently holds the presidency, a one-year term that rotates among the five regional groups.
“Electing Saudi Arabia as the world’s judge on human rights would be like making a pyromaniac as the town fire chief,” said Neuer.
The council has already been heavily criticized by rights activists for turning a blind eye toward the world’s worst abusers. In its 9-year history, for example, there has not been a single resolution, urgent session or investigation of gross abuses by China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, or Venezuela.
So is Saudi Arabia really that bad?
Yes, it really is because their track record for human rights is utterly appalling in so many different ways, to be specific …
- No rights for women
- No political rights
- No freedom of belief
- No LBGT rights
- No freedom of the press
- No Justice
The root cause is of course their adherence to a rather strict variation of Islam that is the dominant belief because it imposes itself by force even though only about 23% of Saudi’s actually follow it. That perhaps also explains why 1 out of every 4 people in Saudi Arabia are secretly not religious at all.
On the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) should be items such as …
- The jailing and public flogging of Raif Badawi for the non-crime of running a website that was critical of the Saudi Regime
- The death sentence by public beheading for a Shia Cleric, Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, for participating in nonviolent protests and calling for the fall of the house of Saud.
… but no, instead Saudi Arabia is rather absurdly a member of the UN Human Rights council and so such items are off the agenda. Now things get even worse because they have this bid in play to run the UNHRC.
Net effect, it completely blows the credibility of a body that already counts dictatorships like China, Cuba, and Russia as members.
“It’s time for the politics of oil to stop trumping the basic principles of human rights.” – Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, a non-governmental human rights group