Lantos and Coleman Differ on Importance of New UN Council

On Tuesday, May 9th, Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA) and Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) issued contrasting statements on the newly elected membership of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). Lantos hailed the Council as “an important step in restoring the integrity of [the UN’s] badly discredited human rights machinery,” while Coleman criticized it as “a perfect example of the UN’s failure to reform.”

The Council held its first elections on Tuesday, selecting 47 countries to form its membership. While the elections excluded many gross violators of human rights (like Sudan and Zimbabwe, both former members of the Commission on Human Rights, the HRC’s discredited predecessor), several countries with controversial rights records (like Cuba, China, and Saudi Arabia) managed to win membership.

Rep. Lantos applauded UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for his “bold leadership” toward the Council’s creation, calling it “an improvement over recent UN human rights commissions.”

“Many of the world’s most abusive governments – such as Sudan, Syria, Vietnam and North Korea – chose not to seek membership in the Council thanks to its stronger standards and the competitive voting,” Lantos said. He congratulated human rights advocates, claiming that they could now “celebrate the success of their efforts to defeat many of the abusers that ran for council membership, such as Iran and Venezuela.”

Senator Coleman saw the elections differently, stating that “the seeds of true reform have yet to take root at 760 United Nations Plaza.”

“It is ludicrous to believe that an entity where the world’s serial human rights abusers are included in the membership will actually be able to play a relevant role in protecting and promoting human rights throughout the world,” Coleman said.

The United States did not run for Council membership, a decision Rep. Lantos called a “serious mistake.”

“I am disappointed that China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia were able to gain seats in the new Council,” Lantos said. “I believe that the United States government bears some of the responsibility for this disappointing development. If we had sought a seat and engaged in a full-court diplomatic press to recruit better candidate countries for the Council and to dissuade unqualified candidates from mounting campaigns, the inaugural Council would have had even fewer human rights violators in its membership and could have been off to a better start.”

The Council is indeed a strong improvement over its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights. In the coming weeks and months, the United States can actively assist in setting the Council’s agenda and rules of procedure. Citizens for Global Solutions encourages the United States to actively engage the new Human Rights Council in order to make it as effective and legitimate as possible.

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