When the UN was created towards the end of WWII, built on the ashes of the League of Nations, it was intended to become the keeper of world peace. As such the first attention was given to the decolonization process and to economic rebuilding of the UN Member States. There was a demand also for tackling the subject of Human Rights, and eventually a Commission on Human Rights came into being. The founding fathers saw the immediate problems and wanted to deal with them first - basically they sought ways to dismantle the colonial empires with the help of the Trusteeship Council, and hoped that human rights will evolve by themselves inside its member states. After 60 years, it was clear that this wishful thinking led to so much hokum - the Human Rights Commission became home to those UN Members that were least interested in the subject, as really they do not give a damn about rights when it comes to the people within the borders of their own sovereign states - their membership at the Commission was simply intended to avoid anyone’s scrutiny. Neither the function of Peace Keeping did fare any better - actually it was non-existent. Whenever things got tough, the UN would vote to send out an interventionary force that would then be disbanded, as soon as possible, leaving the original problem unsolved. Those member states that pay for the UN budget found it untenable to continue to spend their taxpayers money on this UN inefficiency.

Mr. Kofi Annan, in 2005, in his “IN LARGER FREEDOM” declared for the first time that the UN stands on three pillars - Economic and Social Development; Peace and Security; Human Rights. At SustainabiliTank.info, we believe that talk of three pillars was injected to the UN lingo by the Global Summit of Rio in 1992. There it was Sustainable Development, Social Development and the Environment, but we did not think that this was enough. Our Suggestion, as in our “Promptbook on Sustainable Development,” that we prepared for the Johannesburg 2002 Global Summit, was to stand up that tripod on a base of Human Rights and Good Governance. This base creates naturally - Peace and Security.

What the UN Secretary-General’s three pillars are missing is the environment - and today the fact that we do not take care of the environment is starting to be tone more reason for wars and abuse of human rights. This situation is guaranteed to get worse. We brought the question before Mr. Annan, a couple of weeks ago, and his answer was clear and sharp: ON CLIMATE CHANGE I THINK EXACTLY LIKE YOU DO. Let me thus not nitpick here and see how far the “In Larger Freedom” scheme gets as now.

On Human Rights: The General Assembly has agreed, after a long fight, to replace the counterproductive s 52 member HR Commission with a 47 member HR Committee that is for now a direct subsidiary organ of the Assembly, not anymore of the ECOSOC, as the Commission was. Within five years, the Assembly will review its status and Mr. Annan, as he expressed this past Monday, June 19, 2006, at the inaugural meeting of this new Geneva-based body, hopes that by that time the Commission will have establish for itself the authority on HR so that there will be an amendment to the Charter that will turn it into a principal organ of the UN. To quote Mr. Annan directly: “If that ambition is to be realized, the Council’s work must mark a clean break from the past. That must be apparent in the way you develop and apply the universal periodic mechanism, in your willingness to confront hard issues and engage in difficult discussions, where these are necessary to remedy - or, even better, to prevent - human rights violations; and in your readiness to make good use of your ability to meet more frequently than the Commission did, and to call special sessions.” The General Assembly, has ended the HR Commission, but has left in place the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. Will this lead to conflicting attitudes, or will it enhance activities? The future will tell.

So why is the Council an improvement over the Commission? In terms of numbers - the decrease from 52 to 47 is not significant - the number is still too large. But according to talking points supplied by the UN Department of Public Information - there will be direct voting for the member States by the full GA and not just rubber-stamping of “Regional” decisions - a majority of the UN membership is required, not just a majority of those voting - so for a 191 UN you must secure at least 96 votes. Sure, theoretically there are such numbers available in the armory of the G-77, but there are enough internal dissent in the group that plain rubber-stamping can be avoided. Membership will still be according to rules of geographic distribution, but candidates will have to commit to the principles of HR and will submit reports for peer review. There is a term limit of no more than two consecutive terms of three years. Obviously, first elections were for staggered membership with some being able to stay on the committee for a maximum of 6 years, and then be out for at least one year. The US was unhappy about some of these rules as it wanted a real efficient, tight, body with voting that is according to performance on HR and has no geographic designations. Now the US says that they will agree next year to stand for elections. Before we continue, I would like to bring here the list of the first HR Council list of membership.

The first President of the HR Council is the UN ambassador from Mexico, Luis Alfonso de Alba. Going over the list, we have doubts about one quarter of the membership, though it is quite an improvement of the Commission that included all worst offenders. Nevertheless, we are still looking with disbelief at some of the members. Further, UN Members not on this list still can send observers to Geneva and we feel it important to mention the case of Iran. They are not on the list, but they were candidates and on May 15, 2006 a 12 pages long “Note verbale” dated May 8, 2006 was distributed to the GA in which Iran pledges “to uphold the highest standards in promotion and protection of human rights.” That would be dandy if we took this as a promise for change, but what about the fact that Iran sent now to Geneva as its observer at the HR Council Mr. Saeed Mortazavi, the prosecutor general whom two official Iranian government investigators have found responsible for the illegal arrest and detention of Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi, resulting in her torture and death. He was also the lead prosecutor in the Mullahs’ case against a dissident journalist, Akbar Ganji. Motazavi was responsible for closing more than 100 newspapers in Iran and recently ordered the detention and arrest of Iranian bloggers. Canada and the US are vehemently protesting his presence at the HR Council and declared this a mockery of the HR pledge by Iran. Canada is requesting his extradition because of the murder of Kazemi. Correspondents at the UN protested the imprisonment of Ganji. SustainabiliTank.info does not back the US oil policy regarding Iran, but on the other hand, the rule by Mullahs is unacceptable in the 21st Century - actually it was not acceptable for a whole millennium.

We find a full quarter of the countries on that list quite questionable. We like Cuba when it comes to renewable energy - but not when the subject is human rights, and what about Saudi Arabia or Indonesia? Does anyone believe that the Saudis even have a word for human rights? Do they have a concept for the rights of women? Do they agree that there is a right to mind developing education? What are they doing on that commission? Did they think that this is an extension of the oil market? We give them the favor of the doubt, and we hope they will sit there to observe and learn, so they realize that if they do not allow for human rights in their country they will eventually lose it to the rebellion of their own people. I am not prejudiced, I know they do learn, because I know they did eventually learn not to flare the natural gas that comes with the oil when they accepted the fact that using the gas rather then flaring it - one makes good money. It took years to bring them to this conclusion.

But it is not only the usual suspects, like Iran or Saudi Arabia, that we criticize here. Astonishingly, next on my list is none the less but Switzerland. A report by UN WATCH was made available that says: “Jean Ziegler-whose 6-year term as UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food is set to be extended next week by the world body’s new Human Rights Council-aided Colonel Khaddafi in depositing $10 million into a Geneva bank in 1989 to create the “Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize.” The extension of his contract is part of the roll-over of all functionaries of the Commission.

The UN WATCH report continues: “Since that time, a group of interconnected organizations, co-founded and co-managed by Mr. Ziegler, has awarded the Prize and its accompanying funding to accused and convicted racists such as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohammed and French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy. The Prize has also been used to reward anti-Western figures like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, and to fund NGOs who lobbied at the UN against the international sanctions on Libya, which were put in place after Khaddafi agents bombed Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.

Records attached to the report from the Canton of Geneva, from UN documents and from international news sources indicate that, despite recent denials by Mr. Ziegler (”…The Khadafi Prize? How could I have created it? It’s absurd…”), in fact he played a leading role in founding the Khaddafi Prize, has continued to maintain an ongoing relationship with the Prize organization in Geneva, and that he himself won-but did not disclose his connections to-the Khaddafi Prize in 2002. An international coalition of 20 human rights groups including victims of the Libyan regime (see note 1 of report ), have signed an appeal opposing the Human Rights Council’s planned appointment of Mr. Ziegler.

UN Watch called on UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour and the UN Ethics Office to examine the documents in the report and investigate whether Mr. Ziegler’s conduct violated UN ethics rules. If Switzerland refuses to rescind Mr. Ziegler’s nomination to the Human Rights Council, UN Watch urged the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada and other democracies to vote in opposition.

The human rights record of Colonel Khaddafi’s regime is rated by Freedom House as one of the “Worst of the Worst.” Libya’s recent renunciation of weapons of mass destruction has won it international favor. But Khaddafi continues to rule by fiat, denying freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and other basic civil rights and liberties.

Mr. Ziegler’s position as the Human Rights Council’s hunger expert was to expire under a 1999 UN rule that limits expert terms to six years. However, the former Swiss politician is expected to benefit from an omnibus one-year renewal of all mandates to be adopted unanimously by the new body.

Separately, Mr. Ziegler’s native Switzerland also nominated him for an additional post at the Human Rights Council, as an expert on its advisory Sub-Commission. Mr. Ziegler was nominated under one of the three vacant seats allotted to the Western European and Others Group, which in addition to European Union countries includes the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Because there are only three nominees, if elections for the 13 new Sub-Commission experts are held next week-as proposed by the African group, though opposed by others-Mr. Ziegler’s election to the second post is equally assured.

Widespread outrage over the election in 2003 of Libya as chair of the old Human Rights Commission is considered to have helped bring about the demise of that body. It would be tragic if one of the Human Rights Council’s first actions will be the appointment of a man with substantial and unethical ties to the regime of Colonel Khaddafi. The harm to the Council’s credibility, legitimacy and effectiveness might be irreparable.

See full report here: “Switzerland’s Nominee to the UN Human Rights Council and The Moammar Khaddafi Human Rights Prize”.

Further, regarding the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Louise Arbour, a statement to the HR Council was released June 23, 2006. It is a five page litany of all that is wrong, but I did not find in it any indication of what has been done about these many problems beyond observing them and highlighting them for the Council. The first page deals with poverty as a human rights violation and mentions the MDGs. Then we move to various forms of discrimination and we learn that “indeed gender discrimination remains one of the most widespread human rights violations.” “Racial discrimination is also ever present, and in some regions may even be growing, fueled by fear of terrorism, or anxiety over competition for employment. Those fears are easily manipulated with results often difficult to predict or control.” The High Commissioner traveled to Darfur and Somalia to advise cooperation with the UN and notes - the new “Optional protocol to the Convention against Torture” that provides for an absolute prohibition against torture in the context of counter-terrorism.

We hope that Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba will take his office seriously and do his best to differentiate between the few solid crystals he gets in his hand and the chuff that is deeded to him from the Commission, we wish him, and ourselves, al the best.

Above was on Monday in Geneva and that first session of the new HRC will go on until June 30, 2006, but then on Friday June 23, 2006, a second very important new UN body came into existence - The UN PEACEBUILDING COMMISSION - that had its start in New York. The UN SG arrived back in town in time to open this event.

Actually, according to the 2005 World Summit, what was established now was the “Organizational Committee of the Peacebuilding Commission.” All 31 members are for two years and during that time they will organize the permanent form. The structure of this supposedly temporary group is of special interest. It is only in a secondary way dependent on the discredited but “holly” UN regional system. Please see why I say so: Considering that this is a group that will have its hands full, if allowed to act, it must contain mainly those that can act if they will be allowed to act. This means, according to their own demand, the Permanent 5, but also the top 5 Providers of assessed contributions to the UN budgets, and the top 5 Providers of military personnel and civilian police to UN missions. To these 15 that are expected to act, the UN added for good measure another 16, figuring out in the process also a way where they reintroduced through the back door the calculation of the regional groups, by saying that each one of the five UN regional groups should have no less than 3 seats on the commission. This was achieved by adjusting the appointments of the General Assembly allotted 7 seats as the General Assembly, the Security Council (here it was 5+2), and the ECOSOC, each had been given 7 seats on the Commission with the additional 10 seats coming from the Providers of Money and the Providers of Personnel.

The official list is as follows:

The Foreign Minister of Denmark, the June President of the Security Council, and a member of the new Commission, pointed out the “unique model chosen for this body, and he highlighted also the important new position that Carolyn McAskie will have as head of the Peacebuilding Support Office. The Head of the Commission is from Angola - a country that clearly was in need of rebuilding after years of strife.

The UN Secretary-General expressed his happiness that the UN has finally got a body devoted specifically to peacebuilding. This new body, in addition to the Human Rights Council, the new Central Emergency Response Fund, and the new Democracy Fund, and “other changes and reforms that have been put in place or set in motion recently,” are the SG hope that the US Congress and the Administration in Washington, as well as the European Union, and Japan, will now decide to accept the fact that the UN has started to move in the right direction. Will they - this is now to be seen - and there is just one week left until the UN declares it has a budgetary crisis or it is on temporary relief.