Farce: Meet the UN's Human Rights Council of 2017
If only it weren't a laughing matter.
1.3.2017
13
There is no more glaring an example of the United Nation's hypocrisy and utterly subversive nature than the list of nations comprising its so-called "Human Rights Council."
That the council's mandate is to "uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights" is nothing more than a farce, considering the human rights violators that man its helm.
UN Watch, a watchdog group dedicated to exposing the "human rights body," released a list of a few member countries along with a brief synopsis of the human rights violations for which they are guilty (below is a sampling):
Saudi Arabia
Expertise in human rights: Death sentences for apostasy and adultery; corporal punishment including flogging and amputation; judiciary controlled by regime; beheading more peoeple than ever before; arbitrary arrests of dissenters and minorities; no freedom of speech; jails blogger Raif Badawi.Venezuela
Expertise in human rights: Widespread arbitrary detention; imprisonment of opposition leaders; intimidation of journalists; torture; policies causing mass hunger and health catastrophe.Cuba
Expertise in human rights: Systematic violation of freedom of speech, assembly, press; elections are neither free nor fair; threats and violence against dissidents.Qatar
Expertise in human rights: Inhuman conditions for 1.4 million migrant workers; women denied basic rights to equality, denied right to be elected to legislative council; finances ISIS and Hamas.Burundi
Expertise in human rights: Police killings of peaceful protesters; government forces commit summary executions, targeted assassinations, enforced disappearances; arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence; genocide warning.Bangladesh
Expertise in human rights: Extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, killing of secular bloggers by Islamist groups, restrictions on online speech and the press, early and forced marriage, gender-based violence, abysmal working conditions and labor rights.
We would say this elicits a genuine "LOL" moment, but sadly, this is no laughing matter.
The complete list of UN Human Rights Council member-nations follows below. The year listed alongside each nation is the year that country's membership is slated to take expire.
- Albania 2017
- Bangladesh 2017
- Belgium 2018
- Bolivia (Plurinational State of) 2017
- Botswana 2017
- Brazil 2019
- Burundi 2018
- China 2019
- Congo 2017
- Côte d’Ivoire 2018
- Croatia 2019
- Cuba 2019
- Ecuador 2018
- El Salvador 2017
- Ethiopia 2018
- Georgia 2018
- Germany 2018
- Ghana 2017
- Hungary 2019
- India 2017
- Indonesia 2017
- Iraq 2019
- Japan 2019
- Kenya 2018
- Kyrgyzstan 2018
- Latvia 2017
- Mongolia 2018
- Netherlands 2017
- Nigeria 2017
- Panama 2018
- Paraguay 2017
- Philippines 2018
- Portugal 2017
- Qatar 2017
- Republic of Korea 2018
- Rwanda 2019
- Saudi Arabia 2019
- Slovenia 2018
- South Africa 2019
- Switzerland 2018
- Togo 2018
- Tunisia 2019
- United Arab Emirates 2018
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 2019
- United States of America 2019
- Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) 2018
The lone peaceful nations included on the member council are perfunctory. Rather, the vast majority of nations enumerated above are far from exemplars of a high standard of human rights. If ever there were a greater reason to defund this sham of an organization, we've yet to see it.