The 60th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) was held in Geneva, Switzerland, recently. At the top of its agenda was the issue of ”naming and shaming” countries violating human rights, a practice many developing nations want to see end.
Every year during March and April daily demonstrations are staged by activists from various countries where human rights are abused.
In many countries demonstrations are denied, political opposition obstructed or even banned, critical media silenced and vocal criticism of governments rewarded with jail sentences or even execution. This resulted in the establishment in 1946 of the Commission on Human Rights, the world’s foremost human rights forum.
In 1967 the commission began a long tradition of dealing with specific country or territory situations, which falls under Item 9 of the commission’s agenda (the question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world).
The use of ”naming and shaming” resolutions were aimed mainly at human rights abuses by former colonies as well as South Africa and then Rhodesia. After the African National Congress came to power in 1994, South Africa, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela became a strong proponent in supporting this method of criticising governments for serious human rights abuses
However, last year the Africa group, including South Africa, led a so called ”no action motion” on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe and supported a similar motion by China on the situation in that country. It entails that resolutions put forward for discussion and vote are taken off the agenda, in essence preventing a discussion on violations of human rights in a certain country.
This year the African group, supported by Arab countries, even discussed scrapping Item 9 altogether. Leading the African group to scrap Item 9 is Zimbabwe. However, some democratic African countries such as Botswana, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa didn’t want to hear about it. The issue was dropped, at least for this year’s session.
Not dropped, however, is the ”no action motion”, which makes it impossible to even discuss a resolution condemning human rights abuses in specific countries. Support for the ”no action motion” comes mainly from the African group, other regional groups like the Arab countries and countries like China and Cuba.
These countries are convinced that the ”naming and shaming” resolutions are aimed only at developing countries and never at the Western world, even though there is agreement that the United States’s continued imprisonment without trial of suspected al-Qaeda supporters in Guantanamo Bay is a serious violation of human rights.
Amnesty International’s Peter Splinter supports this argument, but he also stresses: ”Why doesn’t the Arab or Africa group put forward a resolution condemning the United States? Instead, it seems that the frustration of these countries with the US’s actions are rather used to put forward a ‘no action motion’ in connection with the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. This does not make sense.”
Voting on Item 9 began on April 15.