Sri Lanka denied seat on UN Human Rights Council
Updated
Japan, Pakistan, South Korea and Bahrain have all been elected to represent Asia on the UN Human Rights Council. But Sri Lanka and East Timor have lost their battle for a place.
Presenter: Linda LoPresti
Speakers: Brad Adams, Asia Director for Human Rights Watch.
ADAMS: We pushed very hard to have Sri Lanka defeated because their human rights record is bad and getting worse. They have made no improvements on addressing impunity on the recommendations by various UN experts responding to reports by groups like ours. We published a lengthy report on disappearances, which the government has essentially dimissed, which showed that Sri Lanka has one of the worst problems of disappearances in the world. So they didn't deserve the seat.
LOPRESTI: But did Pakistan deserve the seat which also has a record of systematic violations of basic human rights?
ADAMS: Yeah absolutely, Pakistan does not deserve a seat. I think the only thing one can say in favour of Pakistan having the seat is that they have a newly elected government that in its first couple of months has done some human rights friendly things, such as removing most of Musharraf's decrees that did things like censor the media. They've signed the international covenant on civil and political rights, they ratified the international covenant on economic and social and cultural rights, and they've signed the convention against torture. But you're absolutely right to say that Pakistan has a deplorable human rights record, it has state sponsored violence, disappearances, widespread torture, the army is still actually effectively in control of many parts of the country. So what this points out is that there were not enough pro-human rights candidates to fill all the seats.
LOPRESTI: But the other candidate for the Asia seat was East Timor. In your view would it have been better to give it to a new country like East Timor rather than Pakistan?
ADAMS: You know East Timor's complicated, it's a very small country, it's going through a very serious internal crisis. I think it was our judgement that they really couldn't play an active role very well in Geneva. But we didn't oppose their candidacy. I just don't think they would have brought much to the table, I mean they just don't have much of a foreign ministry and they don't have a good human rights record. I mean it's very sad, nothing but sympathy among all of us who fought so hard for the rights of Timorese for so many years. Lots of bad choices, it should be that in Asia there were enough rights respecting democracies to elect but there weren't.
LOPRESTI: And given that the competition didn't seem that fierce did it really, given that only about six Asian countries put up their hands. It says a lot about the Rights Council no?
ADAMS: It says a lot about the Rights Council. I mean one thing that countries are slightly concerned about is the fact that if you join the council you subject yourself to what is called universial periodic review, which means that your human rights record is scrutinised officially by the United Nations and you have to agree to that and allow access and all the other things. So I think some countries don't want that and didn't apply. Other countries just don't believe in the whole human rights movement in principle even though a lot of them signed up to them. Others are more cynical, I would put Pakistan in that category and Sri Lanka. They'll say they want to get involved in Human Rights Council and they want to work for international standards, but then they do everything they can to undermine them.
LOPRESTI: Do you take the UN Human Rights Council seriously given that there are some of the worst violators of human rights sitting on that council? I guess it's a case of the foxes guarding the chickens?
ADAMS: It is definitely the fox guarding the chickens. I mean in fact no one's guarding the chickens, so it'd be overstating it to suggest that anyone at the HRC is actually guarding anybody right now. I mean the only thing we can do is try to build it up into something that it's not now, it is not what we hoped, it is not at the vanguard of promotion and protection of human rights. It has been politicised deeply, spending a lot of its time on resolutions about one country, Israel, and ignoring many other countries. The problem is that it's the only game in town, people often talk about should the United Nations exist and everyone knows that it must and if it stopped existing tomorrow we'd have to reinvent it. And the same goes with the Human Rights Council, there needs to be a UN human rights mechanism, we have to do our best to try to make it work.
