Friday, October 12, 2018

UN: Under-fire for appointing despotic regimes to UN Human Rights Council.

(UN) So today the UN appointed 18 states to the UN Human rights council

and the selection of a number of those states hasn't gone down well with a lot of people:
For example we have the Philippines where President Rodrigo Duterte's crackdown on drugs has resulted in  "a killing frenzy" that between July 2016 and Oct 2018 has seen over 7000 people murdered . Political opponents of Duterte have a nasty habit of getting arrested 

Then, there is Eritrea which has no problem persecuting and jailing government critics and  due to its no time limit national service. (really just a front for cheap labour)  has resulted in around 4000 Eritreans leaving in search of asylum every month. In fact so concerned was the UNHRC about the conditions in Eritrea, it commissioned a report on Human right abuses in 2015, the findings of which were quite damning of the country. (PDF here)

Others include :
Burkino Faso (not known for its Human rights)
Bahrain (Also not known for its Human rights)
Cameroon ( Where only the other week, the army was caught out on film murdering women and children)
Italy (Which is currently prosecuting a black female MP for calling the ruling far right party 'racist' after they published a photo of her as an orangutan.) Lets not forget the following bastions of Human rights: Somalia , Bangladesh, and it doesn't take a mastermind to understand the following voting patterns at the UNHCR since 2006:

 Algeria - 0
 China - 0
 Iraq - 0
 Pakistan - 0
 Qatar - 0
 Russia - 0
 Somalia - 0
 Turkey - 0
 Venezuela - 0

 Zimbabwe - 0

Gee and how the left complained when the US said the UNHCR was biased and pulled out, taking its money with them the other month. The UN being at the front of that queue with the tag line #StandUp4HumanRights.
It appears from the look of things, the UNHCR could do with taking a bit of its own advice.