U.N. Creates New Rights Council

The United States stood nearly alone Wednesday as it voted against the creation of a U.N. Human Rights Council, saying the reform did not go far enough to keep abusers off the panel.

However, U.S. officials did not carry through on a threat to block the new body’s funding, and pledged to work with other nations to make the council “as strong as it can be.”

Jan Eliasson, president of the General Assembly, called the vote “a historic moment for human rights” as 170 member countries backed the new council. Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau joined the U.S. in voting against the council, while Iran, Venezuela and Belarus abstained, saying they feared that powerful Western nations would use the panel to target them.

After the applause faded in the General Assembly hall following the vote, U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton said the assembled diplomats had missed a historic opportunity to help people most in need.

“We must not let the victims of human rights abuses throughout the world think that U.N. member states were willing to settle for ‘good enough,’ ” Bolton said. “We must not let history remember us as the architects of a council that was a compromise.”

Bolton said later that Washington had not decided whether to seek a seat on the new council.

The council is meant to replace the 53-member Commission on Human Rights, which was founded in 1946 to censure countries that abuse their own citizens. Membership on the commission was allocated by region, which allowed nations with poor human rights records to gain seats and use them to head off criticism of their actions.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed the new council last year, saying the commission’s declining credibility “casts a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole.” Months of negotiations culminated in the compromise presented Wednesday to the General Assembly.

The new council will be slightly smaller than the commission, with 47 members. In an effort to keep human rights violators off the panel, its rules say that to join, a candidate has to win a majority, or 96 votes, in a direct election in the General Assembly. Each member country’s human rights record will be reviewed periodically, and a systematic violator can be suspended from the council with a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly.

The council will meet in three sessions a year totaling 10 weeks instead of the commission’s single six-week session, and it will have the new ability to meet quickly to intervene in a human rights emergency.

The seats will be distributed among regions: 13 for Africa, 13 for Asia, eight for Latin America and the Caribbean, seven for a bloc of mostly Western countries, including the U.S., and six for Eastern Europe. Under the resolution adopted Wednesday, the commission will be abolished June 16 and the new council will convene three days later.

U.S. officials said the filter to exclude human rights abusers from the council wasn’t strong enough. The U.S. pushed to raise the hurdle for membership to a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly, and wanted to bar countries under U.N. sanctions.

Many countries, including Canada and members of the European Union, as well as major human rights groups, shared Washington’s disappointment with the council. But some of those critics said the U.S. proposal to renegotiate the matter would risk an even worse result, and that a review of the council’s status in five years offered a chance to make improvements.

“This gives the United Nations the chance, a much-needed chance, to make a new beginning in its work for human rights around the world,” Annan said in a statement after the vote. “The true test of the council’s credibility will be the use that member states make of it.”

In an effort to reassure Washington and to strengthen the council, about 50 countries, led by members of the European Union, pledged this week that they would not nominate or vote for a country considered a serious human rights violator.

Although Bolton gratefully acknowledged the pledges in his speech, he said the U.S. decided to vote against the council’s creation after some of its key demands weren’t incorporated in the compromise text.

“The real test will be the quality of membership that emerges on this council, and whether it takes effective action to address serious human rights abuse cases like Sudan, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Burma,” he said.

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth said he’d like to see candidates for the council nominated at least 30 days before the May 9 elections so there would be time to scrutinize their records. He also wants to see regional groups nominate more candidates than seats so there would be a real choice in the elections.

“We’re very happy that it was adopted,” Roth said. “We can celebrate the council’s birth. But whether it walks or crawls depends on governments’ commitment to keep off the worst violators.”