The Human Wrongs Commission

A potent example of everything that is wrong in the world today can be found in a single Commission of the UN: The Commission on Human Rights. Anne Bayefsky at NRO gets to the heart of the idiocy and evil that the Commission symbolizes:

The dynamic reveals a great deal about the underlying U.N. pathology. With no democratic pre-conditions for membership, the commission, like the general assembly, is a forum through which non-democracies can trump democracies. Furthermore, situating democracies in an organization where relationships with non-democracies provide leverage over other democracies divides democratic states rather than bringing them together. Though the EU relishes the role of middleman between the state sponsors of terrorism or genocide and the United States, the halfway point is not where the U.S., or its fellow democracies, ought to be.

In March, Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed saving the credibility of the U.N.'s primary human-rights body by scrapping it and creating a human-rights council. It would be elected by a two-thirds majority of U.N. members, and "those elected to the Council should undertake to abide by the highest human rights standards." This suggestion ignores the fact that states will not relinquish geographic distribution on such a U.N. body, and the vote trading and slates of regional groups means the likes of China will simply reappear. There are no democratic and rights-respecting criteria for membership. And the inevitable relationship of the council to the General Assembly — with its full panoply of despotic regimes in the front row — spells an absence of real change.

As Bayefsky points out, this is every dictator's dream -- international validation of their regime as an equal to all free nations. Why else would thugs like Saddam and Fidel go to such great extremes to showcase their "democratic" elections (in which they get 99.999% of the vote) if not to show the world how humane and free they are and that they are just as legitimate as real democracies?

By giving every two-bit thug an international podium and equal status and voice with the freedom-loving, democratic nations, the UN has managed to turn the original concept that led to its founding topsy-turvy and become a force for evil.

On the Human Wrongs Commission the dictators' dream is the entire world's nightmare.