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How should we react to the problems at the UN Human Rights Council?
Submitted by admin on 26 June, 2008 - 14:36
In a session at the 2008 General Assembly on Human Rights, triggered by the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Roy Brown outlined just how ineffective the UNHRC was, indeed that it was at best passively shielding Human Rights abuses from examination and at worst an obstructing action against them. Roy gave examples to show that by some measures the Council had deteriorated to the level of its discredited predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights. Keith Porteous Wood was invited to suggest how IHEU member organisations and supporters should react.
Keith maintained that awareness of the problem, far less its seriousness, was remarkably poor. He had even found this among those involved in Human Rights work. He therefore identified the first priority as consciousness-raising. This applied both in the media and among politicians. IHEU had been successful in identifying newsworthy events and interesting the worldwide media in them, usually through an international news agency. For example http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL12772652.html http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-32777720080331 http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L06927371.htm and http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=597006
Keith also cited some of the initiatives he had found successful on the political and diplomatic front in the hope that they might serve as useful examples. These included:
(a) Compiling a detailed and scrupulously-referenced report with recommendations to members of the (worldwide) Inter-Parliamentary Union, the "trade union" of parliamentarians. [Link to report which needs to go on web]
(b) He had also been passing information to: (i) Members of the UK and European Parliament sympathetic to our concerns, (ii) a top-ranking diplomat at the European Commission (the "Civil Service" of the European Union), (iii) the upper echelons of the UK Foreign Office and the UK diplomatic mission dealing with UN issues in Geneva , home to the UNHRC, (iv) A UK Parliamentary Committee (inter alia) scrutinising the government's work on Human Rights – and has also been in discussion with them, (v) Council of Europe officials
(c) He has discussed the problems with relevant NGOs, providing background information.
Keith sought to cajole his audience into being much more proactive in media work and lobbying. As hard-line religious dogma is being directed at politicians with a much greater intensity, there is an increasing appetite for our balancing counter-perspectives.
He suggested that in order to turning this opportunity to our greatest advantage we need to:
1) Keep up to date with developments in news and politics
2) Identify openings for input, e.g. where our perspective would be especially relevant
3) Be more prepared to upset people, if you are sure your point is valid
4) Seek out and cultivate politicians likely to be sympathetic to our perspective.
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How should we react to the problems at the UNHRC?
One of the obstacles interfering in the accomplishing of goals and achievements by the UNHRC seems to be that at the moment the arguments considered for human rights revision are spreading thin in too many directions, while private conflicts of interest retard the common efforts for resolutions needed to come up soon.
There are currently too many causes to be resolved by people who are not always educated in global and intercultural matters before they enter the United Nations administrative and lobbying system, but these individual fractions come in with only their fraction in mind, not with the consideration of the wholeness of the United Nations effort and purpose in benefiting people in spite of their differences. I am not saying that causes are not important, but if the number of different causes and directions goes on augmenting at its current pace, the healing capacity of the UN as an organ of impartial and effective justice simply goes lost into many small roots while not serving the main resolutions that could be affecting larger numbers of human beings. The number of causes needs to be prioritized, and the only way to troubleshoot acute problems that have become endemic would be through building immediate and effective plans of action on the most urgent difficulties yet to solve. Such taking of action should be considered from a strategical perspective, not allowing dialectics of division to go on paralyzing the efforts serving reason and union.
The UN strategist, lobbyist or moral speaker should give back to the peoples' the trust needed for them to rely on the presence of the UN, which is not currently always the case, as some arguments only generate more tension and fear from a total collapse.
Common grounds for dialectics and communication should be identified and set up as the basic platform upon which the UN could start negotiating urgent social changes that cannot wait much longer for resolutions. It is way too late to go on talking of the wonderful differences that are present in today's multicultural societies. We are urged to focus on the human commonalities, before we end up finding ourselves in a world of individuals who claim for single causes only and where there is no more any sense of "for the peoples" approach possible.
Focusing upon reason should enter the arguments and speeches given to consideration, instead of the rhetoric of hope in some invisible forces that can't be measured other than by the blind selectivity of a men-made faith and dogma, a problem that creates more dysfunction and hate than any human organization may be able to handle and in which lamentably women and children are the greatest losers.
In sum, some basics are urgently needed to give back to the UN the linguistic coherence that may foster peoples' trust: Prioritizing common goals for the benefit of more human beings, depolarization of uninformed arguments used by the lobbyists for the purpose of blind adherence only; and keeping in mind that we are together as a world that needs urgent measures for healing, so that survival may be granted inside the frames of global trust and safe access to better living standards for more people - where legally and politically possible.