Many of us on the right side of the political spectrum have long despaired at the uselessness and bias of that self-serving entity we know as the United Nations. From its total failure to contain the spread of communism in Korea and Vietnam up to its current inability, dare I say unwillingness, to do anything about the catastrophe in Darfur, not to mention its general bias against western democracies. Now Anne Bayefsky, editor of the website Eye on the U.N. writing in the Wall Street Journal slams the hopeless United Nations:
WHAT is it about standing up for human rights that the UN finds so difficult? A year ago, then secretary-general Kofi Annan dissolved the UN Commission on Human Rights under pressure after the commission discredited itself repeatedly, even electing a Libyan chairman. Now its successor, the UN Human Rights Council, is proving itself to be worse than what it replaced.
This week the council marked its first anniversary in Geneva by adopting an agenda that is an affront to the civilised world. It deletes the job of investigating human rights violations in the brutal dictatorships of Belarus and Cuba and instead focuses its attention uniquely on Israel .
The UN General Assembly created the council without specifying membership criteria, such as, say, respecting human rights. The council now includes the likes of Angola , Azerbaijan , China , Cuba , Egypt , Qatar , Russia and Saudi Arabia . Less than half of its members, using the Freedom House's yardstick, are fully free democracies. And after a successful takeover bid of regional blocs within the council, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference dominates it.
The result is a decimation of a human rights system created over decades, with a new, intense focus on Israel . Israel has been the subject of three special sessions, has been singled out in 75 per cent of the council's state-specific resolutions and will continue to be routinely condemned until council members decide "the occupation" is over, an occupation many members believe began with Israel 's creation.
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