We wouldn’t ask a person who can hardly count to ensure that others can subtract properly. We wouldn’t ask someone who can hardly taste to be a food critic. Yet, the world is all too willing to let five countries whose human rights records are questionable at best to lead the UN Human Rights Council, and one for the first time too (guess which). You may find this more than slightly tragicomedic… the sitting members are: Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Russia, China and as of this week, the US. The most disturbing fact of all: they were each elected by the assembly of the world's nations, sometimes by a large majority.
I've got a good idea to add to these: let's have the worst five rejects on American Idol, based on those who most "just don’t understand why they lost because they really really wanted to win," judge the contest and see who actually does. Then, let's see if the show remains ranked at number one for years and years. This is, metaphorically of course, the path to universal upholding of human rights the world is apparently, and for the historical record, now on. But in actuality the contest has lives and quality of life not record deals at stake, there are no winners, and the biggest loser is the UN and humanity itself.
A seat on this council should not be a stepping stone towards less human rights violations; it should be the affirmation that a country has a top human rights record and so has the moral authority to supervise and taken action on those who do not. Obama's desire for a "new era of engagement" in relation to human rights, whatever that means, only indicates that it has not been fulfilled. A seat on the Human Rights Council should be more coveted and competitively sought after than a seat in the G8. Instead, we have five countries who want to put on a good show lip-singing. Vaclav Havel, who more than most leaders knows first hand about the repression and restoration of rights, derided the Council's composition, and rightly so.
There needs to be an immediate shift in the UN from the power dynamics of the Cold War to a real time meritocracy, or the institution will suffer the fate of its predecessor, the League of Nations, which born in World War One did not survive the sequel. The future will look back upon the current event that is the UN Human Rights Council as one it wishes had not created it, and so perhaps there will be a concerted global campaign to change it before Sudan and Burma are members too.
