Posted on: Friday, May 11, 2001
Editorial
U.S. loses a vital vote on U.N. panel
The loss of the U.S. seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission is a minor diplomatic disaster. But Congress is poised to make things even worse by angrily threatening to pick up its marbles and storm home.
Loss of the seat effectively excludes this nation from condemning human rights violations — in the one forum that the rest of the world takes seriously — in countries like China and Cuba, which were tireless and skillful in lining up the votes to exclude the U.S. delegation.
The Clinton and Bush administrations share in the blame. The other member nations on the commission, based in Geneva, were plainly irritated at unpopular stands taken by the Clinton administration on land mines, AIDS and hunger. In several instances in recent months, the United States cast the lone nay vote in resolutions on these issues.
The new Bush administration quickly made things worse. If the rest of the world thought the United States was arrogant before, this year took the cake as Bush quickly promoted his internationally unpopular national missile defense, threatened to pull out of the ABM treaty, abrogated the Kyoto environmental protocol and broke his campaign promise to limit CO2 emissions.
Some are not convinced that we are so good at human rights at home that we can speak for the rest of the world.
To add insult to injury, Sudan, a member of the State Department's list of terrorist nations, was newly elected to the panel.
As for the rights commission vote, 43 countries had promised to support the U.S. re-election bid, but only 29 kept their word. Rather than nurse a resentment against those members — some of which appear to be our closest allies — who secretly voted against us, we should be scolding the complacent Bush appointees who took those votes for granted and failed to lobby more effectively.
The only way to make things worse is exactly what congressional Republicans seem bent on. the House voted to withhold $224 million in back dues until the U.S. is restored to the rights panel.
Even the Bush administration opposes this spiteful reaction. The United States has agreed, at long last, to honor its obligations and clear up its arrearage. Reneging in this manner is dishonorable.
Rep. Henry Hyde spoke for Republicans when he complained that the ouster "was a deliberate attempt to punish the United States for its insistence that we tell the truth about human rights abuses wherever they occur, including in those countries represented on the commission, such as China and Cuba."
But he's wrong. Most of the no votes were cast by friends of this nation that have tired of our preaching and our failure to consult them before acting.
It's a shame that America is no longer a member of the Human Rights Commission, which was founded by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1947. Perhaps the lesson is that we need to develop enough humility to pay attention to what the majority of other nations — our friends included — think. Indeed, the United States arguably needs the U.N. more than the U.N. needs the U.S.
