A single figure illustrates the scope of this denial: according to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, mass murderers of civilian populations have killed six million people since 1945, nearly the same number killed during the Holocaust. Yet the UN barely raised its voice during the massacres in Cambodia, Rwanda and now Darfur.
Dogged diplomacy led to the resolution adopted by the Geneva Conference. The result, which did not take shape until late March 2009, came as a surprise to anyone who had followed the preparatory meetings and read the overwhelmingly one-sided preliminary texts. The democratic countries, whether they boycotted Durban II or threatened to do so, received a text that crossed the “red lines”, especially with regard to stigmatizing a single country and opposing the defamation of religion. It’s a sanitized text and certainly not a good one. It touches only slightly on material and symbolic violence against women and children, the most common forms of discrimination in today’s world, while almost completely ignoring homophobia. It refers to the unacceptable Durban I resolution, which the European States had compromised their values by signing and which crossed, in advance, the red lines of Durban II.
The resolution ignores the specific, multifaceted nature and grim history of anti-Semitism, which receives only one brief mention in a bizarre phrase that has become canonical since Durban I, stigmatizing “Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and Christianophobia” (and anti-Arabism!). For many years and particularly today, however, anti-Semitism has not only been expressed as a religious conflict but also as a political tool exploited or tolerated by governments or ideological groups, whatever name it is given.
Durban II’s achievements, however, should not be downplayed; it was not a repeat of its scandalous predecessor. But we must not forget that they were primarily the result of the unusually firm stand taken by democratic countries. And, above all, they must not hide the dramatic failure of a Human Rights Council that should be a key player in upholding the dignity of the United Nations but that has completely failed in its mission. One recent example is the Council’s passage three weeks ago of a resolution, introduced by Pakistan, that reiterates its hostility to criticism of religion.
Human rights activists in Islamic countries know better than others how freedom of expression is stifled on the pretext of insulting Islam. They are among the staunchest defenders of the idea that human rights, as adopted by the UN in 1948, must remain universal without giving way to self-interested claims, cultural exceptions or, even worse, subjection to religious law. Contrary to the Durban II resolution, however, the text was adopted by the Human Rights Council despite the opposition of the democracies, who find themselves in the minority here as elsewhere.
The Council’s voting States have no special claim to legitimacy when it comes to preserving freedom or fighting racism. They were selected on the basis of their alliances, not because of the example they set. It should thus come as no surprise – but should cause great indignation – that the likes of Libya, Iran, Pakistan and Cuba headed the conference’s Preparatory Committee.
Together with the Cold War, decolonization was the world’s major political event during the years following World War II. Racism clearly played a key role as an ideology shaping the colonial mindset. As decolonization proceeded, economic and social development became the main concern of the United Nations’ 192 members. Created in 1955 on the foundation of anti-colonialism, the Non-Aligned Movement survived while political blocs and colonialism vanished from the scene. Its 118 members (two-thirds of the General Assembly) continue to demonstrate a nostalgic solidarity. Half of them (57) belong to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) which, for its own benefit, brought to the movement its claims about the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The OIC had itself been influenced by Arab countries, which sought a common scapegoat – Israel – to divert their populations’ resentment after being defeated by Israel in 1948 and 1967. With this broadening of group solidarity, the conflict monopolized United Nations bodies to an absurd degree (compared to the number of human rights violations committed worldwide) and tainted its operations. Of the 26 country-related resolutions adopted by the U.N. in 2008, 20 came out against Israel while none concerned Zimbabwe or Sudan, where thousands of human beings are dying due to the crimes of their leaders – who themselves enjoy positive international relations and unswerving solidarity by former anti-colonialist fighters.
We must replace this perverse system, which warmly welcomes an Iranian president who ranks among the world’s top criminals, while the Libyan chairwoman of the Conference’s Preparatory Committee cuts off the Palestinian doctor who has come to recount the captivity and torture suffered by him and the Bulgarian nurses who were shamefully and falsely accused of crimes by the Libyan regime. “You are not addressing the agenda item”, she told him – and of course not: that’s exactly the meaning of human rights and that’s why the diplomats’ departure from the room must not remain an isolated image. May it mark the beginning of a new era in which those who talk about human rights at the United Nations will be its authentic defenders and not its hypocritical violators.
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