Human rights lose at the U.N. again

I'm sick with a heavy cold today and blogging will be light, but don't miss today's WSJ editorial, Sins of Commission: Human rights lose at the U.N. again U.N.'s Human Rights Commission's report on Guantanamo (which the report's authors didn't even bother visiting)

Instead of a Commission composed of 53 member states, the Council would consist of 45. Now there's a bold step. The U.N. also appears ready to drop the two-thirds majority requirement in favor of a simple majority, lowering the bar to membership. And a modest proposal to exclude countries under legally binding "Chapter VII" U.N. sanctions (as Iraq was before its liberation) has been excluded, presumably because it's too tough on the world's worst regimes.

Instead, the U.N. proposes distributing seats according to what it calls "equitable geographic distribution": 12 seats to Africa; 13 to Asia (including the Middle East); eight to Latin America; five to East Europe and seven to the so-called West European and Others Group, which includes the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.

Thus the two groups that contain the greatest proportion of liberal democracies are allotted the smallest number of seats. By contrast, in 2005 only nine countries in the whole of Africa were rated "free," according to Freedom House. In Asia and the Middle East, only about a dozen of 54 countries are free, and that's if you're counting Tuvalu, Palau, Nauru and Kiribati.

Put simply, this structure not only fails to exclude abusive regimes from membership in the Council, it actually guarantees them their seats. And it is rigged against the very countries whose opinions about human rights might be other than blatantly hypocritical.

As I've said before the UN is beyond reform.

For additional reading on another subject vital to our times, Pajamas Media has the WMD files. Read every word, because the MSM won't be publishing this anytime soon.

(tecnhorati tags United Nations, WMDs, Iraq)