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Eyes of the World on UN Human Rights Council US TRIES TO BLOCK CUBA AT NEW UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL NEW UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNSEL: HOPE FOR THE FUTURE OR MORE OF THE SAME?
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US Tries to Block Cuba at New UN Human Rights Council Taken from Radio Habana Cuba Mexico City, April 17, 2006.-- The United States government is carrying out a campaign to prevent Cuba from entering the UN Human Rights Council, the Mexican daily La Jornada revealed . In a dispatch by its correspondent in Geneva, Switzerland, the daily gives details of a letter by US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, referring to the campaign. The 47-member Council has the mandate to replace the 53-member UN Commission on Human Rights and has set elections for May 9. The new UN body is scheduled to begin operating on June 19. In the letter to US-allied governments, Rice tries to impose her criteria on the principles she says countries aspiring for membership on the Council must follow. Cuba and other countries that are accustomed to US government hostility against efforts to promote progressive social changes, have denounced the manipulation of UN entities by the White House as an attempt to impose its will. La Jornada recalls that on April 6, when the Bush administration announced that it would not seek a seat on the new Human Rights Council, it assured it will "actively campaign" against the membership of Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan, and North Korea. On March 15, the US government became a pariah by voting against the creation of the new Council; however, there is now a list of conditions the US considers must be fulfilled by countries aspiring to be members, the Mexican daily noted. Taken from Radio Habana Cuba March 29 , 2006 Nearly a month ahead of schedule, the UN Human Rights Commission wound up its 62nd session, the last of its more than 60-year existence. Just a day was needed to dissolve and immediately begin to implement the recently approved Human Rights Counsel. The so-called HRC, met in the Commission's usual Room 17 of the Palace of Nations in Geneva, to pass a resolution establishing the transfer of all its functions, procedure and mechanisms to the new agency that will substitute it. Although its official disappearance its set for June 16, just three days before the new Counsel begins its first period of sessions, in practice, the Commission now has no capacity to act on topics other than purely technical and procedural matters aimed at opening the way for the functioning of the new agency. In Monday's first special session, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a full house that the UN member states should take advantage of the change to improve the Commission's work over the last six decades. But she also recognized the now defunct agency's important achievements, among them setting the basis for a group of international instruments in defense of human dignity. The truth is however, that many of the best fruits of the UN Human Rights Commission, never achieved their potential, because of the intransigence or lack of political will of a small group of developed nations headed by the United States, which prioritized civil and political, over economic, social and cultural rights . On its closing day, the Human Rights Commission, heard the words of its president, Peruvian, Manuel Rodriguez Cuadros, who called the occasion, "historic". It is the end of a cycle, he stated, and the beginning of a new one that will be crucial for the future of human rights around the world. Though many would like to share in that optimism, the signals sent out thus far by those who sank the Commission into disgrace, warn that the new agency will have to deal with the same politicized, selective and discriminatory focus that so damaged the prestige of its predecessor . Unfortunately, judging by the vote on the resolution that constituted the Counsel, there has not been the least weakening in the determination of the United States and the European Union and other western powers to keep nations off the Counsel that defend a different political model than their own or those that refuse to obey orders. Those nations have been the brunt of all types of defamation campaigns and, as they did in the Human Rights Commission, the powerful countries will continue trying to place the nations of the South in the accused box. Experts base their concerns over the direction and action of the new Counsel on the past actions of the Commission. The Counsel opens its first official session on June 19 in the Swiss city of Geneva. Its membership has been reduced to 47 countries, which require at least 96 nations to approve them. Washington and other western capitals are already exerting tremendous pressure, so that on May 9, election day, governments they don't like will be excluded. However, the fact that the vote is secret could thwart their plans to control the Counsel's membership. At any rate, many countries, among them Cuba, are willing to take on the challenge of standing up to US maneuvering, as they did in the UN Human Rights Commission. Havana is not afraid to continue doing so within this new agency, even though it appears that it was made to order to favor the interests that Washington has defined as the new American Century. |
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