Posted: 11/2/2017 7:49:00 PM
Author: Hillel Neuer
Source: This is an excerpt from a write-up that first appeared on the UN Watch website on November 2, 2017.
U.N. Human Rights Council
by Hillel Neur
At the world’s highest human rights body, the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council, every session has ten items on the agenda. Item 4 addresses specific human rights situations around the world; Item 7, however, deals with “the human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.” A special agenda item targeting Israel. No other country in the world—not Syria, not North Korea, not Sudan—is singled out. Only Israel.
From its 2006 creation until today, the Council has adopted 7 resolutions on Iran, 10 on North Korea, 25 on Syria—and 73 on Israel. Indeed, there are more resolutions against Israel than on the rest of the world combined.
Yet there have been:
· Zero resolutions for victims in Turkey, even after Erdogan purged 100,000 teachers, judges, academics, and other public officials, and forced independent journalists like Can Dundar and Yavuz Baydar into exile;
· Zero resolutions for victims in Venezuela, where the dictator Nicolas Maduro starves, beats, tortures, jails and kills his own people, destroying a naturally wealthy country;
· Zero resolutions on China, despite the regime’s denial of basic human rights to one-fifth of the world’s population; and
· Zero resolutions on Saudi Arabia, even as it subjugates women, tramples religious freedom, conducts beheadings, and indiscriminately bombs thousands of civilians in Yemen.
On the contrary: the worst criminals are themselves the judges. Council members today include such champions of freedom as China, Cuba, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Soon, Afghanistan, Angola, the “Democratic Republic” of Congo, and Pakistan will join as well, despite their abysmal records on human rights.
Meanwhile, at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, devoted ostensibly to strengthening gender equality and the empowerment of women, their annual session last March adopted only one resolution condemning a specific country: Israel.
This is the same women’s rights commission which now includes Saudi Arabia. When UN Watch revealed this scandalous election—and that at least five EU countries voted in the secret ballot for the Saudis—there was an outcry in Belgium, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michael was forced to publicly apologize. “Je regrette,” he said before the Parliament.
However, Swedish Foreign Minister Wallstrom said this about electing Saudi Arabia: “If there is one place where they ought to be—to learn something about women—it is in the Commission on the Status of Women." How absurd!
