Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un1hrc050608.html
UNITED NATIONS, May 6 -- Even on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the place of these rights in the UN system remains less than clear. Because it is a club of nations, and because it needs access even to dictatorships in order to run programs there, the UN is often silent about human rights abuses. Tuesday at the UN, the staff of the Commission on Social Development said that no issues has been raise this year about Zimbabwe's chairing the Commission, in fact its chair has been praised. Click here for article, here for video.
Also on Tuesday, the organizations Freedom House and UN Watch came to unveil studies rating the countries which are up for election to the Human Rights Council. Inner City Press asked about the UN's own record with promoting human rights, particularly in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the UN spends over $1 billion a year, and in Timor L'Este, where is has played a central role. The organizations rate Timor L'Este "questionable" qualified for the Council, and the day's news about DRC include a report on secret prisons and the locking up of journalists.
Freedom House's Paula Shriefer said that much of the UN's work is not related to human rights. She praised the UN's Democracy Fund. Inner City Press asked if the organizations' rating included what countries like the U.S. do as occupiers, as in Iraq. No, came the answer, countries are only reviewed on what they do within their own borders. So much for Guantanamo Bay, then. In fairness, Freedom House put out a separate study of the U.S. on Monday -- but, such issues are not included in its "Freedom in the World" rankings. Also to Freedom House's credit, its Karin Deutsch Karlekar, when asked last week by Inner City Press to what press freedom ranking the UN would get, given its lack of a freedom of information policy and its blocking of web sites, looking around for a moment and then said, "Not free."
Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, last mentioned in Inner City Press when he was wrongfully accused, temporarily, of murder while in Massachusetts, said that the U.S. lost points for voting against the UN resolution to ban the death penalty. He acknowledged that such issues as France's support of the government in Chad, which appears in Freedom House's "Worst of the Worst," was not factored into the "Qualified" rating UN Watch gives France in its race against the UK and Spain for two Council seats.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/un1hrc050608.html
