Category Archives: UN HRC

UN Watch: Syrians slaughtered while UN condemns Israel. Again. Several times.

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As Syrians continue to be slaughtered, the U.N. is once again too busy condemning Israel to respond to those pleading for help in Aleppo and elsewhere.

The world body’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the principal organ under the U.N. Charter tasked with addressing human rights and fundamental freedoms, has just concluded its annual session by turning a blind eye to the ongoing massacres by the Assad regime. Instead,  a list of all its resolutions for the entire world shows that ECOSOC condemned only one single country: Israel. Two resolutions were adopted against Israel, and one report.

 

Sponsored by Algeria for the Third World grouping known as G-77, and by Turkey, a one-sided and politicized resolution was adopted on July 26 with the following title: “Economic and social repercussions of the Israeli occupation on the living conditions of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

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UN refuses to call terror attack on Jews in Bulgaria ‘terrorism’

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Examiner:

Tourist bus gutted by fire in terror attack.

Since the 18 July terrorist attack on a busload of Israeli tourists in the Balkan nation of Bulgaria, the United Nations has yet to refer to the attack as “terrorism.”

The blast killed 7 innocent people; the Bulgarian bus driver and five Israelis to include the unborn child of a pregnant victim.

An Additional 30 were reportedly injured.

The Geneva, Switzerland based human rights organization UN Watch has issued a statement critical of the world organization for failing to classify the attack as terrorism.

• A U.N. spokesperson said that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms.” In fact, however, the U.N. chief’s choice of terms was weak in comparison to his statement two weeks ago on the bombing of churches in Kenya. In that case, Mr. Ban rightly spoke of “terrorist” attacks, “reprehensible and criminal,” saying the perpetrators “must be held to account.” Yet today he refered only to the deadly “bombing” of Israelis — noticeably declining to describe it as an act of terrorism — and he made no call for holding the perpetrators to account. UN Watch today urged Mr. Ban to clarify his position and to truly use the strongest possible terms to condemn today’s terrorist attack.

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Outrage: Sudan’s Al-Bashir, Indicted for Genocide, is Nominated for Seat on UN Human Rights Council

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U.N. Watch:

Rights group UN Watch urges Ban Ki-moon and rights chief Pillay to speak out

Contact UN Watch in Geneva: me****@*****ch.org

 

GENEVA, July 12 – The Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch urged United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay to urgently speak out against the African-backed bid by Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir, indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court, for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Last week, the U.S. failed to get the council to pass a condemnation of what it said was a Syrian candidacyfor 2014.

The NGO UN Watch also called on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU’s Catherine Ashton to denounce and fight against Sudan’s candidacy.

“Electing Sudan to the U.N. body mandated to promote and protect human rights worldwide is like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a women’s shelter,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

UN Watch already heads an international campaign of MPs and human rights groups opposing the candidacies of Venezuela and Pakistan.

The U.N.’s African group of states agreed behind closed doors to endorse the candidacies of Ethiopia, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Sudan. Because Africa has arranged for five countries to run for the same amount of allotted seats, Sudan’s election is virtually assured.

“Technically,” said Neuer, “Sudan must still receive an absolute majority of 97 affirmative country votes in the U.N. General Assembly’s November election for new human rights council members. However, in the history of these ballots, names presented on a closed slate have never been rejected. It’s just the way U.N. ambassadors work. And the fact is that Sudan has been chosen to head various U.N. groupings, so its election to the UNHRC, however outrageous, is a real possibility.”

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Condemned for rights abuses, Venezuela to join UN rights council

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U.N. Watch:

ON THE ATTACK:  Venezuelan exile Eligio Cedeno, UN Watch director Hillel Neuer, and Human Rights Foundation president Thor Halvorssen, heading to United Nations European Headquarters to challengethe upcoming election of Hugo Chavez to the U.N.’s top human rights body. Geneva, June 27, 2012.

 

GENEVA, June 28 – This afternoon UN Watch will bring Venezuela’s most-wanted man — a banker and former political prisoner who escaped the clutches of Hugo Chavez — to confront his oppressor in a plenary debate of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The high-profile appearance has already sparked interviews withCNN, Spanish news agency EFE, Agence France Presse and Canada’s National Post.

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Mike Fegelman: The UN’s eroding moral compass

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The National Post:

  Mar 12, 2012 – 9:12 AM ET

  • As another telling example of how the UN has lost its moral compass, on March 9, just one day after International Women’s Day marked the achievement and continued challenges of women, the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women, passed the only country-specific resolution condemning Israel for the supposed intolerable living conditions of Palestinian women.

No action was taken against Iran, where girls are stoned to death for allegedly committing adultery, or Syria, where women are indiscriminately tortured, raped, and murdered by the Assad regime. The plight of Saudi Arabian women who are treated as chattel under monarchy-sanctioned gender apartheid was altogether ignored. The United Nations only censured Israel, one of the world’s most progressive defenders of women’s rights, for exclusive and unwarranted opprobrium.

The UN’s preoccupation with Israel will saw one of its own organization’s pass a resolution decrying that the “Israeli occupation” in territories, including east Jerusalem, is the main obstacle for the advancement of Palestinian woman. Not a peep from the UN about the internal Palestinian conditions that stymie female self-determination. Israel’s envoy to the UN, Ron Proser, rightly proclaimed that this council’s resolution “bring levels of absurdity and cynicism to new heights.”

Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East and stalwart protector of women, is cast by the UN as the foremost oppressor of women. In a region where the terms “Middle East” and “women’s rights” are contradictory and not complimentary, Israel stands out as a beacon for the rights of women, not its serial abuser.

It’s no wonder that when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly this past September, he referred to the UN as “a house of many lies” and a “theatre of the absurd.” A place where “Israel is unjustly singled out for condemnation more often than all the nations of the world combined” and where Israel is “not only cast as the villain, but where real villains are cast in leading roles.”

To support his argument, Netanyahu pointed out how Libya chaired the UN Commission on Human Rights under Gaddafi’s ruthless and tyrannical rein. He referred to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq which headed the UN committee on disarmament and how the UN described the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest accessible site as “occupied Palestinian territory”.

In a place where automatic majorities decide anything, it’s no wonder that also this week another UN organ body, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) approved a resolution to keep Syria on the agency’s human rights committee. Talk about farcical.  A leading violator of human rights which has by some estimates killed close to 7,500 of its own people, sits on a UN committee tasked with instilling, nurturing, and enforcing international human rights.

In reality, Israel’s sterling record on women’s rights stands in sharp contrast to the sordid history of its Arab neighbour’s treatment of its own females. Israeli women like the late Prime Minister Golda Meir and current head of the Kadima political party, Tzipi Livni, have led their country with distinguished honour. Israel recently ranked 11th place among 59 developed countries for the participation of women in the workplace. Israeli women serve in Israel’s independent judiciaries, civil service and public sectors, and are leaders in the business and labour communities, all while serving important roles in the Israel Defense Forces. Next week in fact, Israeli women will take part in the “Slutwalk” protest. In a show of solidarity, Israeli women are joining this peaceful protest movement that started in Canada in response to a policeman’s comment that to avoid being attacked, women shouldn’t dress like “sluts”.

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