UN Human Rights Council Legitimacy
The Maduro dictatorship is committing crimes against humanity in #Venezuela. Yet, they are slated to win a seat to the UN Human Rights Council in today's elections. The process is a sham, its results bring shame. Praying a community of conscience will mobilize for justice.
The update to human rights activist Irwin Cotler's dismay at the unbelievable prospect of Venezuela obtaining a seat once again on the 47-member Human Rights Council associated with the United Nations, is that the unthinkable has become reality. President Nicolas Maduro can smirk with satisfaction that his socialist ideal and his gross mismanagement has ruined Venezuela, caused the deaths of all too many people, fractured the nation, created a crippling shortage of basic goods, and created 4.5 refugees. And the world looks away.
The regime's intimidation, torture, imprisonment and murder is notorious. The plight of Venezuelans has transfixed the world, even while those throughout the world who still espouse the socialist ideal remain convinced that there is nothing whatever awry in Venezuela. Its neighbours, however, know otherwise; many, like Colombia, hosting untold numbers of Venezuelans escaping starvation, threats and privation under the Maduro regime.
An estimated fifty nations around the world no longer recognize the Maduro government as legitimate. Because of the general bad odour in which the administration is held, its bid for a seat on the HRC was generally recognized as an attempt to prove that it is not internationally isolated as a pariah state. And with that seat on the council it would be highly unlikely that the council would initiate an investigation into human rights abuses of one of its own.
Of the two Latin American seats open for election, Brazil, with human rights abuses of its own, though not in the same league as Venezuela's, was also elected. Costa Rica had declared its own candidacy with the intention of denying a three-year term to Venezuela, but it was unable to muster the kind of support that Venezuela was given by China, Russia Cuba and other socialist allies to hand the seat to Venezuela.
That nations like Venezuela, are able to mount a candidacy on a tribunal such as the Human Rights Council which sits in judgement of purported human rights abusers across the globe, while its own members reflect the most deep-rooted and institutionalized abuses of human rights is despicable. Yet the council prides itself on promoting human rights and highlights and pinpoints where they are abused, and undertakes the investigation of alleged violations. All of which is a sham; the focus is on one state alone, Israel where human rights abuses are imaged, not real.
Within the corridors of the United Nations, twisted and tortured power plays by self-serving cliques represents the order of the day, every day, in an institution formed for the express purpose of fostering an overall global community of human-right-defending states, for whom opportunity and equality are held to represent the aspirations of just societies. Venezuelans can be forgiven in despairing that the world has no interest in their dire straits, not will it so much as protest the regime of a tyrant like Maduro.
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| A protester throws a petrol bomb while clashing with security forces during a rally against President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, in May 2017. (Marco Bello/Reuters) |
Labels: Failed States, HUman Rights Abusers, Human Rights Council, Hypocrisy, United Nations, Venezuela
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, October 19, 2019
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