Changing Times

There’ve been some major changes since I last updated my blog. I’ll start with the most important, which is that I became a dad for the first time in early March. Funnily enough, my son Ben was born on the Human Rights Council’s annual day on the rights of the child which has reinforced an unnerving suspicion I’ve had for some time that my life and the Council’s fortunes are somehow bizarrely intertwined.

The arrival of my son meant that I missed almost all of the March session, which (despite my absence) was the most successful one yet. Among the highlights, it established a new Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights situation in Iran, something well overdue but which had looked impossible to achieve at the Council for the previous 5 years. It also passed tough resolutions renewing Rapporteurs on Burma and North Korea, the latter with the strongest margin of support ever, and transformed the longstanding and troublesome resolution on Defamation of Religions into something compatible with human rights law.  The Council then met again in April for a Special Session to condemn Syria and set up a UN Mission to investigate the serious human rights violations which remain ongoing in the country.  Taken together with the Council’s earlier strong action on Libya, and the successful effort to force Syria to stand down from its membership bid, it feels very much like the Council’s been experiencing its own Arab Spring. Whether or not this marks a long term shift in approach at the Council, only time will tell. But it certainly feels to me like change is in the air.

And so onto the Council’s June session, which has just finished its first week and is now in full flow. Council sessions are never fun but diplomats, NGOs and other delegates all particularly dislike the June session: it’s too close to the exhausting March session and no sooner have council delegates emerged from 4 weeks in underground meeting rooms than they are forced back inside again. I suppose it’s good news for the hay fever sufferers, since there’s not much chance of encountering Geneva’s cataclysmic pollen levels in the fetid recycled UN air, but it’s bad news for everyone else. It feels rather like the negotiating equivalent of being up all night with a screaming new-born, with only 20 minutes sleep before the next feeding cycle starts again.

This time round we have some pretty meaty issues on the table.  The Libya Commission of Inquiry is due to present its first report following its visit to the country and, all being well, have its mandate extended. On an entirely different part of the world, the EU is looking to bring the first resolution at the Council on the situation of human rights in Belarus, which is in its own back yard. Belarus tends to evade international scrutiny, despite it being home to the last dictatorship in Europe, where the atrocious human rights situation continues to deteriorate with an ongoing crackdown against political opponents in the wake of last December’s so-called election.

There are a variety of important thematic issues to address including what will happen to follow up the outstanding work done by Professor John Ruggie on the issue of business and human rights. There’s also the prospect of a controversial resolution led by South Africa on human rights and sexual orientation, following the suspension of their initiative at the March session to set up a working group to define what sexual orientation means. Such a resolution would be extremely  unhelpful on an urgent human rights issue which remains highly divisive in the Council between those states who wish to end persecution and discrimination on the basis of individuals’ sexual orientation and gender identity and those states who retain criminal sanctions including the death penalty for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons . The subject desperately  needs a sensible and moderate debate, rather than hot-headed confrontation.

Last week much of the focus was on Sri Lanka, following the publication of the UN Secretary-General’s Panel report on violations committed in the latter stages of the conflict in 2009. To coincide with the HRC session, Channel 4 launched a new documentary about it at a NGO side event which made for grim viewing and posed the question whether the international community will do anything to address the many allegations of serious violations which remain without investigation or sanction.

The June session will bring to an end the UK’s current term of membership after a rollercoaster 5 year stint. We’ll be off the Council for the coming 2 years with the next membership bid in 2013. I’d like to extend particular congratulations to incoming members , the Czech Republic, Romania, Peru, Costa Rica and Chile, who were the only countries whose membership resulted from contested elections while the Asian, African and Western Groups all put forward clean slates.

 I’ll let you know how the session’s panning out in a week or so, but right now I need to dash off. There’s an important little man who’s in urgent need of changing.