barryqwalsh
Gold Member
- Sep 30, 2014
- 3,397
- 251
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While rights body is scarred by hypocrisy, US involvement has always been for the better
A few years ago, I covered a long hearing in the cavernous hall in Geneva where the UN Human Rights Council holds its plenary meetings. Ireland was in the spotlight that day. Alan Shatter, who was minister for justice at the time, along with a team of civil servants, spent several hours fielding questions about the State’s human rights record from delegations representing dozens of countries.
This was part of the council’s periodic review, a process in which states are interrogated on – and asked to answer for – their rights record before their peers. The event was by turns insightful and surreal. Surreal because, among those raising concerns to Shatter that day were some of the worst human rights abusers in the world.
The Pakistani delegation had concerns about how Ireland dealt with domestic violence. Uzbekistan deplored the State’s treatment of prisoners. The Afghans were exercised by the situation facing Travellers. They were all legitimate and well-informed interventions. But it was hard to know whether the whole ritual was an apogee or a nadir for the UN system.
Was it an achievement of sorts to have authoritarian regimes give this implicit, albeit purely theoretical, support to the human rights agenda and engaging in the fine detail of it in this way? Or did the plain hypocrisy of the exercise fatally undermine the council itself?
Trump cuts US a bad deal in leaving UN Human Rights Council
A few years ago, I covered a long hearing in the cavernous hall in Geneva where the UN Human Rights Council holds its plenary meetings. Ireland was in the spotlight that day. Alan Shatter, who was minister for justice at the time, along with a team of civil servants, spent several hours fielding questions about the State’s human rights record from delegations representing dozens of countries.
This was part of the council’s periodic review, a process in which states are interrogated on – and asked to answer for – their rights record before their peers. The event was by turns insightful and surreal. Surreal because, among those raising concerns to Shatter that day were some of the worst human rights abusers in the world.
The Pakistani delegation had concerns about how Ireland dealt with domestic violence. Uzbekistan deplored the State’s treatment of prisoners. The Afghans were exercised by the situation facing Travellers. They were all legitimate and well-informed interventions. But it was hard to know whether the whole ritual was an apogee or a nadir for the UN system.
Was it an achievement of sorts to have authoritarian regimes give this implicit, albeit purely theoretical, support to the human rights agenda and engaging in the fine detail of it in this way? Or did the plain hypocrisy of the exercise fatally undermine the council itself?
Trump cuts US a bad deal in leaving UN Human Rights Council
