The UN Human Rights Council:
Where Do We Go from Here?

Last year, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan had a dream: to see a major overhaul of the main UN human rights mechanisms in order to make them more effective. His report, “In Larger Freedom”, proposed a number of drastic and important changes, and was presented to the world leaders during the New York summit in September 2005. It was an important and timely document, but many politicians around the world were not so delighted by the prospect of changing a situation which was convenient for them: a new strong human rights body for the UN would step on too many governments' toes.

Despite this resistance, it was nevertheless obvious that the old and ineffective Human Rights Commission needed to be significantly changed. The resulting draft resolution proposed a new Human Rights Council, but one that was a watered-down version of what Annan had envisioned. On 15 March 2006, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the draft resolution that created the Human Rights Council in replacement of the Commission. While the new Council has been welcomed by many, other observers remain skeptical about the true effectiveness of these reforms.

The Commission had been frequently accused of being ineffective and not making a true difference in countries facing a major human rights crisis. In all fairness though, the Commission did contribute certain positive measures during its existence - such as giving the world the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other instruments of international human rights law. It had also adopted international human rights law standards on thematic issues such as children, torture and minorities. On the other hand, the Commission had shamefully failed to act during the genocides in Rwanda, Burundi and the former Yugoslavia.

A key advancement of the Council was meant to be the new election procedure for members. This procedure aimed at preventing the election of major human rights violators such as Zimbabwe, Libya or Sudan which had previously been members of the Commission and had created obstacles for its effectiveness. The 47 members of the Council were elected on 9 May 2006, directly and individually in the General Assembly by secret ballot. Candidates needed to win an absolute majority of at least 96 votes, which stood in contrast to Kofi Annan’s proposal of a much safer two-thirds majority vote to better exclude major human rights violators.

Unfortunately, this hope received a bad blow when a number of countries with a worrying human rights track record were elected. While no country is perfect, certain countries have proven to be particularly serious and persistant violators. Countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Sri Lanka, Cameroon, Pakistan, Tunisia and Bangladesh all have very negative human rights records and have recently been harshly criticised by the international community. For example, until recently Pakistan was suspended from the Commonwealth for not abiding by the Harare Principles, which includes human rights. According to Freedom House’s annual survey of political rights and civil liberties, together with the global press freedom index of Reporters Without Borders, 47% of the countries on the new Council failed to meet accepted democratic standards.  Whilst this is an 8% improvement over the old Commission, it is still not a big enough improvement to put anyone’s mind at rest. Another worrying fact is that more than half of the nations on the Council have voted at the UN to oppose resolutions protecting the victims of the Darfur atrocities. There is a fear that countries with a poor human rights record will hinder the work of the Council in an attempt to cover up their own wrongdoings.

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