The Human Rights Council is an intergovernmental body created by the UN General Assembly in March 2006 “with the main purpose of addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them”. The Council has forty seven member states, each elected for three years from among the member states of the UN. The Council meets in Geneva in March, June and September each year. In addition to the member states, observer states and duly accredited NGOs are permitted to attend and speak at meetings of the Council. As an organisation with special consultative status with the UN in New York, Geneva and Vienna, a delegation from IHEU has regularly attended meetings of the UNHRC during the five years of its existence. The President of the Council is elected annually and this year, being the turn of Asia, the President is H.E. Mr Sihasak Phuangketkeow of Thailand.

The UNHRC website gives much information on the Council, including membership and procedures. The Resolutions, decisions and President’s statements from the 15^th Session of the Council in September 2010 are all to be found on that website, www.ohchr.org.

Since the formation of the Human Rights Council, the IHEU delegation under the leadership of Roy Brown has played an important role in debates on matters before the Council and in bringing to its attention a wide range of violations and threats to human rights including blasphemy laws, women’s rights and slavery. In this work, Roy has been ably assisted by many individuals who have given freely of their time at no cost to IHEU.

The UN Human Rights Council is far from perfect. On its United Nations Human Rights Council webpage, Wikipedia says “According to human rights groups, the Council is controlled by a bloc of Islamic and African states, backed by China, Cuba and Russia, who protect each other from criticism”. UN Secretary General Ban ki Moon and former High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson have criticised the Human Rights Council for acting according to political considerations as opposed to human rights. However, the UN Human Rights Council is a key part of the machinery of the United Nations and whatever the strength of criticisms it remains the world’s leading institution for human rights and the only formal machinery for debating human rights violations at the global level. We must hope that the current review of the activities and performance of the Council during its first five years will open the way to changes and real progress on human rights.

The debates in the Council are recorded and reported in detail by the UN and IHEU has set up an IHEU channel within YouTube on which many clips of IHEU interventions in the Council may be viewed. There is a link to this on the IHEU website.

Abuses of human rights are so widespread that the problem can seem overwhelming. These abuses range in scale from the treatment of whole groups such as the Dalits in India to the persecution of our own representative, Leo Igwe in Nigeria. However, I’m sure that the work of the IHEU delegation in the Human Rights Council has made and continues to make an important impact. IHEU is now recognised as an important voice of reason and humanity within the Council. It is important that we continue to support the activities of our delegation in Geneva.

--Jack Jeffery

* Jack Jeffery is former First Vice President, IHEU. He now leads the IHEU delegation to the UN in Geneva.