The InterDependent

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) is likely to come under harsh attack on Thursday with the mark up of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s (R-FL) “UN Reform Bill,” which would withhold all funding to the HRC unless reforms concerning the body’s membership criteria and agenda are met. While the Council is indeed imperfect and some of its criticisms well-founded, a funny thing happened since the Republican-controlled House of Representatives set off on a war-path against the UN: the HRC began showing visible signs of progress.

It is true that in its first few years, the Council appeared to be suffering from similar shortcomings that plagued the much maligned UN Commission on Human Rights, which it replaced, including, a bias against Israel and an inability to respond to urgent human rights situations. But now in its fifth year, the Council has recently begun to win cautious praise. For example, Human Rights Watch, a frequent critic of the body, commended its “bold steps in response to human rights crises across the globe”. The Economist even recently bestowed lukewarm praise with its piece, “A long-despised watchdog wakes up, barks and even bites.”

Why the sudden buzz? Within the last year HRC appears to have been stirred to action. The Council initiated international investigations in Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, and Syria, appointed an independent expert to report on the human rights situation in Iran, and extended the mandates of rapporteurs for Myanmar, Cambodia, Somalia, and Sudan. It also adopted a groundbreaking resolution that seeks to address violence, discrimination, and incitement to religious hatred without reference to “defamation of religions,” as well as the first-ever UN resolution on the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered persons.

UN Photo

A wide view of the Human Rights Council at its eighteenth session, in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Council also recommended the suspension of Libya’s membership. To many, this may seem to be a bare minimum requirement and raise the question of why Libya was even elected to the Council to begin with. But if this can be seen as a signal that states are taking membership criteria more seriously, then we may see fewer states joining the Council to shield their own bad behavior. Syria after all decided to withdraw its candidacy a few months after Libya’s suspension. [The Council recently requested that the GA resume Libya’s membership, but that step has not yet been taken].

The Council’s 18th session, which closed at the end of September, did not see any groundbreaking and controversial resolutions; however, both its achievements and hindrances indicate that the body is the principal venue to deal with global challenges in human rights.

Keeping with the recent trend, the 18th session saw robust debates on a number of critical human rights situations, including those in Belarus, Cambodia, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. With the exception of Syria, the Council put a high priority on consensus based resolutions with cooperation from the country in question. In fact, a greater percentage of resolutions were passed by consensus in this session than in any session in the last two years.

However, much of the Council’s work is not related to country situations, but is instead focused on reinforcing accepted human rights norms as well as advancing new ones. In its recent session, for example, the HRC established a new mandate for an expert who will work to advance the principle of transitional justice through examining national truth and reconciliation commissions, justice systems, and other post-conflict mechanisms. It also decided in its next session to hold a panel discussion on freedom of expression on the Internet.

Even taking into account the recent accomplishments of the Council, it is still an imperfect body. But its shortcomings are neither as severe nor as incorrigible as its critics in Washington would like to believe. If this were the case, U.S. efforts over the last two years to depolarize the body and strengthen its response to country situations through constructive engagement and dialogue would not have yielded such positive results. Instead its improvement reveals how misguided the “UN Reform Bill” really is and how much is at stake if the U.S. were to abandon the body to less human rights-minded countries. Instead of slandering the HRC and threatening its funding, now is a good time for the U.S. to focus on its reelection to the body and to examine how its own record could improve the overall work of the Human Rights Council.