New UN rights body under pressure to prove itself

GENEVA, June 18: The United Nations' new human rights body, the Human Rights Council, begins its inaugural session tomorrow under close scrutiny to see if it does more to protect fundamental freedoms than its discredited predecessor.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a prime mover behind the replacing of the old Human Rights Commission, will attend the launch and a host of ministers will be in Geneva to address it in the opening days.

Much of the initial two-week session of the 47-state body will be devoted to planning future work, but its chairman ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico has set aside time for examining current rights crises around the world.

The latter will be a test of whether the new body is ready to break out of the confrontational and highly politicised atmosphere -- often pitting developed nations against developing -- that hampered the commission, diplomats and activists say.

''The new Human Rights Council must be more than the dysfunctional old commission by another name,'' said Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director at the US-based Human Rights Watch.

''The new members must ... find new and more effective ways to help the victims of human rights violations across the globe,'' she added in a statement.

But the council, intended to spearhead a series of UN reforms, had a difficult birth, with the United States declining to stand for membership because it said that changes to the old commission did not go deep enough.

KEEP OUT ABUSERS

Unlike the commission, whose 53 members were nominated by regional blocs, those wanting to take part in the council had to win a majority in the UN General Assembly. Washington backed Annan's initial call for a two-thirds vote, which it said would help keep out abusers who had been able to join forces within the commission to bloc effective action against violations.

But rights activists say that with the storm of international criticism over Guantanamo Bay and other US detention centres, as well as alleged secret prisons, it was far from certain that Washington would have won election.

One of the other key changes is that the rights records of all members will be periodically reviewed. It will be the job of the council to decide how this will be done.

While some states whose records have been questioned, such as Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China won election, others failed or did not even stand.

Washington has not ruled out standing in the future and it has been active in preparatory work. The US ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva will address the council on Wednesday.

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference has already made it clear that the situation in territories under Israeli military occupation must be discussed.

It also wants a debate on respect for religion following the furore stirred up by the publication late last year in some Western countries of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad -- something which is abhorrent to Muslims.

European countries have warned they will not allow Israel to be the only one signalled out for censure. Its routine condemnation, in resolutions repeated year after year, symbolised for many the sterility of the old commission.

European diplomats say there will certainly be discussion of Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea, although what form it will take and whether there will be resolutions was not decided.

But China, which has faced attempts at censure over charges of suppression of religious and ethnic minorities, has warned that there must be no return to the finger-pointing of the past.

REUTERS