Skip to main content

The challenge for the new UN Human Rights Council is to avoid the fate of the old Human Rights Commission, which abusive governments flocked to join to avoid condemnation.

Abusive governments joined the commission by convincing a handful of governments in their region to support them in a backroom deal. Council members, by contrast, must attract 96 positive votes in a worldwide election. To put that in perspective, Sudan, a perennial commission member, secured only 84 votes in a recent ballot on its atrocities and is unlikely even to seek a council seat.

Similarly, abusive governments joined the commission to avoid scrutiny and to prevent visits by UN investigators. Council members will be the first scrutinized and are required to welcome investigators. Such procedural innovations should significantly change the incentives and atmosphere for membership selection.

Loconte and Gardiner pine for "an organization dominated by strong democracies." That's an attractive vision, but given the limited number of such democracies today, they aren't describing the United Nations. Ad hoc coalitions of democracies have their role, but there is a special stigma attached to condemnation by the United Nations. It's that stigma that the council seeks to harness.

Council supporters are hardly anti- American, as Laconte's and Gardiner's fallback claim would have it. Rather, they understand that the new council is the best available option for making the UN an effective human rights defender. That's a reality that everyone should support.

(Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch)

Your tax deductible gift can help stop human rights violations and save lives around the world.

Region / Country