Geneva — So, how many BMWs does it take to make one United Nations Human Rights Council?
Many — to judge by the scene I came across Monday evening in the parking lot of the U.N.’s plush premises in Geneva, site of the old and failed League of Nations. That’s where the U.N.’s “reformed” new Human Rights Council was racing the clock to finish sorting out its rules of play within the year allotted when it was approved in 2006 by the General Assembly (and praised by Kofi Annan). The deadline was midnight, and the gang of thug governments on the Council was gunning for a deal that would ease the way for them to permanently condemn — what else? — Israel, while giving some of the worst governments on the planet a free pass.
Unfree China, which sits on the council along with the likes of not-free Russia, utterly unfree Saudi Arabia, miserably unfree Cuba, and quietly unfree Qatar, was playing hardball. The Chinese were demanding that a two-thirds majority vote by the 47-member Council be required to place a country under scrutiny. America, in a moment of prescience during John Bolton’s tenure as ambassador to the U.N. had declined last year to dignify this new forum by seeking a seat in its ranks. So Canada, which is a member, was carrying the flag for the free world, and taking the pounding that at the U.N. is usually allotted to the U.S.
I’d arrived in Geneva Monday afternoon on other business, but at about 9 P.M. got an e-mail from Hillel Neuer of the stalwart and invaluable Geneva-based U.N. Watch, describing the standoff. So I strolled over to the Palais des Nations (yes, the U.N. in Geneva is housed in a palace) for a look. I walked past the fountains and the flags and the grand gates, past the flowerbeds and lush lawns surrounding the spacious well-manicured grounds, and descended a curving drive to a parking lot crammed with BMWs and Mercedes — harbingers of the diplomacy within. A black Porsche sped through the lot, presumably on some urgent night-time errand of humanitarian bent.
The cars (and chauffeurs) were ranged in front of a large building advertising a “human rights corner” and other Potemkin attractions for daytime tourists. The real U.N. was on display in a big downstairs assembly chamber. There were dozens of ambassadors, scores of aides, and a fringe of weary reporters, all waiting to see what wonders might transpire before the witching hour. There was no formal debate underway, but everyone seemed determined to sit it out at least until midnight. No one seemed quite sure what would happen if no deal had been reached by then. I watched three Russians swagger toward pride of place at their members’ seats, near the Chinese, in the inner ring of the concentric seating arrangements.
In the back of the room, scattered across some of the chairs in the press section, were printed handouts from previous sessions, all slamming Israel. I picked up two, one from Algeria and Pakistan, the other from “Pakistan (on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference) and the Sudan (on behalf of the Arab Group).”
The Israeli ambassador, Itzhak Levanon, was sitting in an observer seat, reading a newspaper. I wandered over and asked him if it was difficult to be the focus of so much attention. He said he was unenthusiastic about the arrangement, but “Sometimes you get a chance to reply.”
I drifted over to an observer for the European Union, and asked if it would really be such a bad thing if the Human Rights Council failed to meet the midnight deadline for agreeing on its own rules, and maybe just collapsed. He said that was unacceptable; the Council is “the main human-rights forum for the U.N. system.” I asked if it had not perhaps become a complete farce. He said, “It’s politics. That’s the name of the game. That’s the U.N. system.”
