UN High Commissioner for Human Rights , Louise Arbour, recommends universal membership to the Commission on Human Rights. – This will give ownership to the human rights agenda to all states, said Arbour who visited the Norwegian Human Rights House on Friday. (06-DEC-04)
Representatives from a number of Norwegian human rights NGOs had gathered at the Human Rights House in Oslo to hear the High Commissioner talk about transitional justice and protection of human rights.
Arbour took up her mandate as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) on 1st of July this year. A Canadian Supreme Court Justice and ex-prosecutor of United Nations war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Ms. Arbour succeeded Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed in a terrorist attack in Baghdad August 2003.
High-Level Panel
The High Commissioner´s visit in Norway coincided with the presentation of the report of the UN Secretary-Generals High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. Among the recommendations of the High-Level Panel was that the membership of the Commission on Human Rights should be expanded to universal membership. “This would underscore that all members are committed by the Charter to the promotion of human rights, and might help to focus attention back on to substantive issues rather than who is debating and voting on them,” reads the report.
Heated tension
Among the members of the Commission are the People´s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, all with poor human rights records.
The issue of which States are elected to the Commission has become a source of heated international tension in recent years. The High-Level Panel says this has had “no positive impact on human rights and a negative impact on the work of the Commission,” and that “Proposals for membership criteria have little chance of changing these dynamics and indeed risk further politicizing the issue.”
UNHCHR Arbour supports this view. She said such criterias of eligibility, designed to ensure membership by “good” and “clean” states only, would lead to a situation where “the north would put the south on trial”.
– This would exacerbate the division between “us” and “them”. Such a division would be totally unhelpful, said Arbour, and continued:
– Universal membership will give ownership to the human rights agenda to all states. That´s where it should be. This would very much be a step in the right direction. Read the new UN High-Level Panel Report
About the UNHCHR
The High Commissioner is the principal UN official with responsibility for human rights and is accountable to the Secretary- General. The post of High Commissioner was created in 1993. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is based at the Palais Wilson in Geneva, Switzerland, with an office at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
About the UN Commission on Human Rights
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, composed of 53 States, meets each year in regular session in March/April for six weeks in Geneva. Over 3,000 delegates from member and observer States and from non-governmental organizations participate.
The Commission can also meet exceptionally between its regular sessions in special session, provided that a majority of States members of the Commission so agree, mindful of the need for the Commission on Human Rights to deal with urgent and acute human rights situations in the most expeditious way.
During its regular annual session, the Commission adopts about a hundred resolutions, decisions and Chairperson´s statements on matters of relevance to individuals in all regions and circumstances.
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