UN rights conference an absurd failure

The Montreal Gazette
April 21, 2009

http://www.legal-project.org/article/274

Excerpt:

 The latest United Nations "summit" on human rights degenerated into absurdity yesterday as Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seized the occasion to denounce Israel, prompting dozens of diplomats to walk out.

The same kind of drearily familiar fanaticism destroyed the 2001 UN human-rights meeting. After Canada became the first country to announce that it would shun this follow-up meeting, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, the U.S., Germany, Poland, and New Zealand, as well as Israel, all did the same.

Yesterday some Arab and Muslim delegates applauded Ahmadinejad, but British and Norwegian ministers said his diatribe amounted to hate speech. Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, called the Iranian's words "completely inappropriate at a conference designed to nurture diversity and tolerance."

Well yes. But what passes for "human rights" at the UN is not precisely the same concept you hear in, say, Irwin Cotler's office. The Durban meeting's steering committee, for example, is chaired by Libya, that paragon of freedom.

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