Anne Bayefsky is a genuine human rights guru and the proprietor of Eye on the UN. Anne and the Eye have been following the winding road that has produced the proposed new UN Human Rights Council. In Thursday's New York Times article, Ambassador Bolton parted ways with Kofi Annan with respect to the proposed Council; Ambassador Bolton is quoted as observing that conversations with other governments suggest that the strongest argument in favor of the proposal in its present form is that it could be worse.

Yesterday NRO posted Anne's column on the proposed Council: "A Commission by another name." Anne also released a statement with AEI's Danielle Pletka and Heritage Foundation's Jay Fellows condemning the proposal for the adoption of a Human Rights Council to replace the Commission on Human Rights. In the NRO column Anne writes:

The heart of the problem with the [present UN humam rights] commission lies with its membership. Current members include some of the world's worst human-rights violators: China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. Throughout the months of negotiations over a new entity, such states vehemently opposed efforts to introduce criteria for membership on the council. They succeeded. Not one criterion is included. Instead, the draft merely suggests "when electing members" a state's human-rights record be "taken into account." Even states under Security Council sanction for human-rights violations (although this includes, at the moment, only Sudan and Côte d’Ivoire) would not be excluded automatically.

In a late update last night, the AP reported support for the creation of the Council from "a dozen Nobel Peace laureates" (including, of course, Jimmy Carter). What is to be done? If you would like to express your views on this particular reshuffling of the deck chairs, the State Department Web site includes this page on which to send a message to Secretary Rice.

Ultimately, the United Nations must be replaced or abolished, with an arrangement made for its service organizations that do some good. At the least, the United States should take its leave from it. Let us recall the immortal words of former UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick's deputy Charles Lichenstein. Shortly after the Soviet Union shot down KAL 007 murdering its passengers, legislatures in New York and New Jersey denied Soviet aircraft landing rights. Some at the UN raised the question of whether that body should remove from the United States. And Lichenstein, fed up and in no mood for "diplomacy," said, "We will put no impediment in your way. The members of the US mission to the United Nations will be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset."

The United Nations is an absurd house of horrors serving the interests of the enemies of peace and freedom. Witness its current Human Rights Commission and its proposed Human Rights Council.

Posted by Scott at 06:24 AM  |    |