Europe vs. Human Rights

...objections...

...After Freedom House arranged a press conference with Chinese democracy activists during last year's session, China, with the support of Sudan and Cuba, brought proceedings against the group to bar it from participating at future sessions...

...French diplomats point to China, explaining that civilized dialogue coaxed China to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights...

...BY NINA SHEA AMERICANS WERE SHOCKED when our European allies took the lead in ousting us from the United Nations Human Rights commission early this month...

...A German diplomat recently named special rapporteur for Sudan similarly cited the commission's success at gaining that country's cooperation in establish-ing—with international funding—a committee to eradicate slavery...

...That was the last time the United States was able to secure co-sponsorship of the measure...

...China is the country that stands to gain most from the U.S...

...This session, the United States was the lone sponsor of the draft resolution against China, having failed to garner the European support it had through most of the 1990s...

...All of Western Europe voted for it except the United Kingdom, which abstained...

...The European Union-sponsored resolution on Sudan was so weak that the United States was forced to abstain and make a statement of protest...

...In making this argument, the French ignore China's recent labor camp detentions of Catholic bishops and thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, its destruction of a thousand churches just before Christmas, and its revival of the practice of confining dissidents in psychiatric institutions...

...The United States stands virtually alone in striving to focus world attention on actual violations of human rights...

...ouster—so much so that some observers believe eagerness to curry favor with this important trading partner was the Europeans' main motivation for running three candidates...

...The views expressed here are her own...

...A "right to development" resolution, introduced by the Non-Aligned Movement (alive and well a decade after the Cold War), names among other obstacles to development "the existing intellectual property rights regime [and other] impediments to transfer of technology...

...For the fact is, the United States is deeply resented, not only by the despotic regimes that pack the com-mission—the likes of Libya, Algeria, Cuba, Syria, and Vietnam—but also Nina Shea is director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House...

...At the 2001 session, a dozen resolutions passed, some at European initiative, on the rights to food, water, housing, HIV/AIDS drugs, education, development, and a host of other economic issues...

...A European ambassador confidently told me that in a few years there will be no more "finger-pointing" on the Human Rights Commission...

...The European Union says it prefers "cooperation" to public pressure...

...delegation at the recently concluded annual session of the commission, i was less surprised...

...First, a new dominant culture requires that the commission pass its resolution by consensus...

...The loss of its seat on the commission is meant to punish the United States for marching out of step...

...In the past, the champion of economic rights was the Soviet bloc...

...Since then, Western Europe has made important contributions in advocating human rights abroad and been an essential American partner at the commission in giving a voice to the voiceless...

...The Khartoum government, which Secretary of State Colin Powell recently called "the biggest single abuser of human rights on Earth," thus was able to have removed from the latest resolution all mention of slavery—even though the commission's rapporteurs have documented the involvement of Khartoum's militias in the practice of slavery in seven consecutive annual reports...

...After Denmark introduced the resolution citing Chinese human rights abuses in 1997, China threatened to make the issue "a rock that smashes on the Danish government's head...

...Then as now, the main purpose served by debating such unenforceable rights is to distract attention from governments' refusal to enforce the civil and political rights of the individual...

...Consensus politics means that Sudan, say, gets to help draft the resolution censuring itself...

...China's open bullying and use of trade levers are well known at the commission...

...The United States refuses to go along with this...

...Slaves, meanwhile, continue to be captured in government-sponsored raids...

...In contrast, speaking for the EU, the Swedish ambassador addressed the issue in platitudes and generalities...

...At most, EU delegates were willing to cite countries for failing to cooperate with a commission rapporteur...

...premises...

...Clearly, cooperation is a fiction invented to protect Europe's honor and to shield the reputations of abusive governments...

...Fourth, resolutions dealing with economic rights for groups and even governments are proliferating...

...Under an unwritten understanding supported by the EU, the proceedings follow a 19-point "thematic" agenda, and under only one of these themes is it deemed permissible to mention countries by name...

...Third, there is Europe's China problem...

...The Europeans favor this, as do states with poor records on human rights...

...forum—frowns on the practice of naming violators of human rights in open debate...

...Having served as a member of the U.s...

...by our European Union allies, who dislike being forced to vote in public on measures censuring countries with which they hope to conclude trade deals...

...Repeatedly at the commission, the United States has had to break with the European Union in order to vote its conscience on issues like slavery in Sudan, religious persecution in china, and political repression in Cuba...

...contrary to reports in the media, the ouster was not a reaction to American "unilateralism" on issues such as missile defense and global warming...

...Denmark, the bird that pokes out its head, will suffer the most...

...Rather, the Europeans' action reflects the abandonment of their historical commitment to human rights...

...These "rights" as envisioned in the resolution are unachievable, depending as they would for their implementation on wholesale transfers of wealth and technology from developed to undeveloped nations...

...Next year, with the United States out of the way, there will be no embarrassing resolution of censure that China will have to work hard to defeat...

...Incredibly, only Japan joined the United States in opposing this resolution...

...an impossible one unless the Europeans come to their senses...

...The United States often stands alone, too, in opposing blatantly political condemnations of israel...

...If the European nations do not return to this tradition, the commission will have outlived its usefulness whether or not the United States recaptures a seat...

...The same pattern held whether the subject under discussion was persecuted religious believers, vulnerable groups, or those imprisoned for exercising the international right to free expression...

...Newspaper editorials from Copenhagen to Madrid are expressing satisfaction with the American ouster, sneering that go-it-alone U.S...

...Beijing tolerates no criticism of its human rights abuses on U.N...

...The lone exception: Israel may be criticized at any time...

...During the recent six-week session, the commission adopted five resolutions censuring Israel, over U.S...

...If the United States is to win back its seat in 2002 and prove him wrong, it will need to develop a strategy for reversing four trends that are hastening the commission's decline into irrelevancy...

...whereas in the past, the western European delegations were in the forefront of the commission's work, highlighting injustices in South Africa, East Timor, and Bosnia, they now resort to euphemisms and half-truths...

...To reverse these four deplorable trends is a tall order...

...behavior in international forums represents "boorish" isolationism...

...Eleanor Roosevelt and the other drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the first Commission on Human Rights in 1947 believed that moral suasion could be a potent force for change...

...But of the tens of thousands of people thought to be enslaved in Sudan, this committee has rescued only 353, in a single highly publicized event shortly after its establishment two years ago...

...When France, Austria, and Sweden all insisted on competing for seats this year, they forced the Economic and Social Council, which oversees the commission, to resolve the matter by secret ballot...

...Second, the commission—like many a U.N...

...It was the Europeans who flouted the settled practice by which one of the three "Western Group" seats on the commission is reserved for the United States...

...Thus, during the discussion of "human rights defenders," American delegates mentioned case after case of particular defense lawyers, journalists, clergy, and other human rights activists in specified countries who have been imprisoned or murdered for their work...