Mob Rule Evicts America from the U.N. Human Rights Commission

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, a secret ballot was used to deny the United States a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission (HRC) for the first time since that panel was established in 1947. The effect of this action will be to assure that the Commission’s deliberations — and, indeed, those of the UN as a whole — are even more politicized and, therefore, still-less-relevant to the actual abuse of human rights around the world. For Americans still nurturing romantic illusions about the universality of the values we hold dear and the desirability of world government, this action should be a valuable reminder. It underscores the tyranny (not to say the absurdity) that arises from what amounts to mob rule made possible by the UN’s practice of giving every nation equal voting representation (except in the Security Council).

A Rogues’ Gallery’

Matters are made worse on the Human Rights Commission by the representation on that body of a number of the world’s most vicious and systematic abusers of fundamental freedoms. For example, Sudan — whose regime has the dubious distinction of being a perpetrator simultaneously of genocide, slave-trading, terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — was voted onto the Commission on Wednesday. Others who should be in the dock, not on the members’ dais, at the Human Rights Commission include: China, Cuba, Algeria, Syria, Lybia, Pakistan and Vietnam. Human Rights Watch’s representative at the UN, Joanna Weschler, has properly lambasted the Commission line-up as “a rogues’ gallery of human rights abusers.”

By blocking America’s membership on the HRC, these countries are unlikely to be inconvenienced in the future by the damning resolutions the United States has traditionally championed in that body. That prospect may actually encourage their despotic regimes to intensify their domestic repression.

The Mob Punishes’ the U.S.

News reports suggest that some governments voted against U.S. membership on the Human Rights Commission as “punishment” for such offenses as: the American refusal to embrace international agreements deemed unacceptable by Washington — such as the International Criminal Court, the Ottawa Convention banning landmines and the Kyoto Protocol on global warming; President Bush’s determination to defend the Nation against ballistic missile attack; and the United States’ refusal to pay all of its assessed dues to an unreformed United Nations. This vote, however, actually serves to reinforce the wisdom of those U.S. actions, and the attitude from which they generally spring — namely, that decisions bearing upon the security, sovereignty and/or economic well-being of this country cannot safely be subordinated to the lowest-common-denominator served up by the UN mobocracy.

The Bottom Line

In the end, the decision to deny America a place at the UN table with respect to human rights will hurt the cause of freedom more than it will the United States. As the Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Rep. Henry Hyde, rightly pointed out: “The decision may have the unfortunate result of turning the Human Rights Commission into just another irrelevant international organization.” Another collateral casualty may be the United Nations itself if, as seems likely, this deliberate affront to the United States translates into diminished congressional support for pending legislation intended to clean up so-called U.S. “arrearages” to the UN.