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UN "Could Do
More" on Human Rights, is "Not Free" as to Press, Study Releasers
Conclude
Byline: Matthew
Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
May
6 -- Even on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights,
the place of these rights in the UN system remains less than clear.
Because it
is a club of nations, and because it needs access even to dictatorships
in
order to run programs there, the UN is often silent about human rights
abuses.
Tuesday at the UN, the staff of the Commission on Social Development
said that
no issues has been raise this year about Zimbabwe's chairing the
Commission, in
fact its chair has been praised. Click here for
article, here
for video.
Also
on Tuesday, the organizations Freedom House and UN Watch came to unveil
studies
rating the countries which are up for election to the Human Rights
Council.
Inner City Press asked about the UN's own record with promoting human
rights,
particularly in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
where the
UN spends over $1 billion a year, and in Timor L'Este, where is has
played a
central role. The organizations rate Timor L'Este "questionable"
qualified for the Council, and the day's news about DRC include a
report on
secret prisons and the locking up of journalists.
Freedom House's Paula Shriefer said
that much of the UN's work is not related to human rights. She praised
the UN's
Democracy Fund. Inner City Press asked if the organizations' rating
included
what countries like the U.S. do as occupiers, as in Iraq. No, came the
answer,
countries are only reviewed on what they do within their own borders.
So much
for Guantanamo Bay, then. In fairness, Freedom House put out a separate
study
of the U.S. on Monday -- but, such issues are not included in its
"Freedom
in the World" rankings. Also to Freedom House's credit, its Karin
Deutsch
Karlekar, when asked last week by Inner City Press to what press
freedom
ranking the UN would get, given its lack of a
freedom of information policy and
its blocking
of web sites, looking around for a moment and then said, "Not
free."
UN Human Rights Council: welcome to the fUN
house
Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, last
mentioned
in Inner City Press when he was wrongfully accused, temporarily, of
murder while in Massachusetts, said that the U.S. lost points for
voting
against the UN resolution to ban the death penalty. He acknowledged
that such
issues as France's support of the government in Chad, which appears in
Freedom
House's "Worst of the Worst," was not factored into the
"Qualified" rating UN Watch gives France in its race against the UK
and Spain for two Council seats.
One of the candidates panned by the two organizations,
Sri Lanka, is
actively lobbying at the UN, including in its press corps, to get a
Council
seat. Speaking of candidacies, what about what Geneva sources tell
Inner City Press is Bernard Kouchner's pitch for Louise Arbour's post?
We will have more on all of this.
* * *
These reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
UN Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017 USA
Tel: 212-963-1439
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright
2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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