Convicts running the jail: to understand the problems plaguing the United Nations we need look no further than the dreadful record of the Human Rights Commission.

Eleanor Roosevelt would shudder today if she knew what had happened to her beloved Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). In a life filled with accomplishments, Mrs. Roosevelt regarded her work on the Universal Declaration as her greatest achievement. As Chair of the UN's Commission on Human Rights she worked tirelessly to produce a document that would protect the fundamental rights of ordinary people and that would be honoured by all nations.

In 1948, the Declaration was adopted by the UN General Assembly. It became the world's first comprehensive agreement among nations on the specific rights and freedoms of all human beings. Among others, these include civil and political rights such as the right not to be subjected to torture, to equality before the law, and to a fair trial. There is a right to freedom of movement, to asylum, and to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, and expression. The protections in the UDHR also include economic, social, and cultural rights such as the fight to food, clothing, housing and medical care, to social security, to work, to equal pay for equal work, to form trade unions, and to an education.

Since coming into force, the UDHR has expanded. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights were adopted by the General Assembly in 1966. As well, there are Conventions on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. There is a Convention on the Rights of the Child and another to Eliminate Discrimination against Women.

The majority of UN members accept the UDHR covenants and conventions as an essential legal code. Many countries have used the Declaration as a model for their own constitutions. Dozens of legally binding international treaties are based on the principles in the UDHR. In addition, the document has been cited as justification for numerous United Nations actions, including acts of the Security Council.

The world has these wonderful rules for the protection of peoples' rights. Unhappily though, tens of thousands of people are tortured, illegally imprisoned, and murdered by their governments every year. Millions of children work in sweatshop factories while others toil in the sex trade. Hundreds of millions of adults are denied the right to vote in open elections. The status of women in dozens of countries is little better than slavery, and sometimes is actual slavery.

It's a huge black mark on the United Nations that such widespread human rights violations take place. When they do, complaints are supposed to be dealt with by the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). The commission has 53 member states, elected to serve two-year terms by the Economic and Social Council. But, among its members in 2005 are China, Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe. These five nations are frequently cited by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as some of the world's worst human rights abusers.

An even worse absurdity occurred in 2003 when Libya took over the chair of the Human Rights Commission. The country's leader, Colonel Muammar Gadhafi has ruled the country with an iron fist since seizing control in a coup in 1969.

Members of the Economic and Social Council even had the nerve to remove the United States from the commission in 2002 for the first time since it was set up. Okay, the U.S. is not perfect--it has used its seat to block criticism of Israel and to refuse support for affordable AIDS drugs in countries devastated by the disease. But, to be told by the likes of Syria, Congo, and Libya that you don't belong on a body that oversees human rights must be tough to swallow. The U.S. record on human rights is a country mile better than that of these nations.

Nations such as these want to be on the commission so they can shut down investigations that might be embarrassing to them. But, in doing so, they embarrass the entire United Nations.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the commission at its annual meeting in Geneva in April 2005: "We have reached a point at which the commission's declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system."

Mr. Annan has given Louise Arbour the job of cleaning up the mess. Ms. Arbour was a Justice of Canada's Supreme Court before she was appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2004.

One of the ideas she will be looking at is Mr. Annan's suggestion to create a smaller, high-ranking Human Rights Council elected by the General Assembly.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. List the criteria you would set up for a nation to qualify to sit on the Human Rights Council suggested by Kofi Annan. Would election by a majority of members of the UN's General Assembly be sufficient?

2. Open a file on Louise Arbour and her efforts to reform the UN Commission on Human Rights. Try to grade her achievements.

FACT FILE

Canadian John Humphrey wrote a 400-page blueprint from which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was crafted.

Websites

United Nations Human Rights Commission--http:// www.udhr.org/UN/default.htm

Universal Declaration of Human Rights--http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

RELATED ARTICLE: Shambles in Durban.

The UN had a meeting on racism in 2001. It broke up in division, name-calling, and bad feelings all round. Instead of discussing ways of combatting racism delegates fought, among other things, over whether or not to declare Israel a racist state.

There's 2,000 years of history in this issue, but the most recent turmoil is over Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Many Palestinians left what is now Israel when the Jewish state was created by the United Nations in 1947 out of what before was Palestine.

Arab and Islamic states used the conference in Durban, South Africa to denounce Israel. The politicking over this issue was such that almost nothing was accomplished on the racism file. Kathleen Mahoney of the Montreal-based group Rights and Democracy expressed her frustrations. The meeting, she told The Globe and Mail, "became at times a pro-racist conference. It's absurd the way it went off the rails."