UN abdicates role as rights defender

The principle of human rights was gravely set back last Friday when members of the United Nations General Assembly voted to grant seats on the UN Human Rights Council to several countries that have shown open disdain for democratic justice and basic freedoms. The UN itself will suffer as a consequence as the 
47-member council – which in 2006 replaced a UN entity that was deservedly criticised for accomplishing little – sinks into irrelevance. 
Now, 18 nations have “won” a General Assembly election for council seats in which there was no competition. The new council members include the Philippines, globally condemned for a “war on drugs” that has claimed nearly 5,000 lives and led to two complaints before the International Criminal Court against President Rodrigo Duterte. Manila, to no one’s surprise, immediately crowed that earning a council seat vindicated Duterte’s drug war. And meanwhile United States UN Ambassador Nikki Haley lamented the “lack of standards [that] continues to undermine” the UN. She said her country was right to withdraw from the council in June.
Hundreds of innocent Filipinos have been among those killed extra-judicially by law enforcers and pro-government hit men since Duterte’s rise to power in mid-2016. Daniel Balson of Amnesty International USA said the UN vote “puts [rights-abusing nations] on the world stage and empowers them to fundamentally undermine notions of human rights that are accepted internationally”. New York-based Human Rights Watch pointed out that General Assembly members could easily have registered their opposition to the likes of the Philippines, Eritrea, Bahrain and Cameroon joining the council by leaving the pertinent spaces on their ballots blank. Iceland, to its credit, tried to argue that only UN member-nations with good records in human rights should be allowed on the council.
But the outcome of the vote appears to illustrate an untenable level of optimism that countries seated on the council will abide by the global standards of behaviour that it promotes. They also ostensibly become more open to scrutiny in their handling of rights issues. Undermining both of these notions were the words of Alan Peter Cayetano, the Philippines’ Foreign Affairs Secretary, who Reuters quoted as calling the vote “a vindication that fake news 
and baseless accusations have no place in modern-day human rights 
discussions”. The council’s chairperson and more sensible member-nations should quickly dismiss such an egregious misinterpretation of events and set Cayetano straight. Otherwise the killings will continue.
Duterte has confusingly dismissed allegations that he supports unlawful killings by police and at the same time boasted that he’d enjoy killing drug dealers himself. Such is the nature of the populist politician with a tough-guy image, but for so many members of the international community to overlook his brutality and refuse to hold his government accountable is appalling. Duterte and his coterie 
routinely threaten rights advocates, and unidentified gunmen shot dead at least 60 rights defenders in the Philippines last year alone, according to Ireland-based Front Line Defenders. Yet the General Assembly has in effect rewarded Duterte with an excuse to go on executing people who are denied trial.
The council meets three times a year to assess the rights progress of all UN member countries. The Universal Periodic Review gives everyone a chance to respond to evidence of abuse. It is difficult to see how this procedure could be honest with such dubious company among the judges.