By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, May 8 2006 (IPS)

On the eve of Tuesday’s vote on membership in the new United Nations Human Rights Council, 44 prominent non-governmental organisations from 14 Arab countries are calling for the rejection of Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Algeria.

The three are among eight Arab countries being considered for seats on the newly constituted Council. In total, there are 65 applications for membership.

While applauding the creation of the new Council as successor to the widely criticised Human Rights Commission, the NGO coalition said in a press statement that the “credibility and effectiveness of the United Nations warrant electing members enjoying a sense of accountability to the international human rights law, together with overruling the worst-performing states in terms of human rights, in application of the provisions contained in the General Assembly resolution on establishment of the council”.

The coalition said, “It is noteworthy that most of the Arab governments are classified among the least respecting to human rights worldwide. U.N. commissions along with the Arab and international rights organisations have been documenting various gross human rights and international human law violations being committed for years across and within most of the Arab states.”

The group said that “voting for (Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria) “will impair performance and undermine credibility of the General Assembly, and impede the role it plays in improving human rights conditions not only in these states but also in the Arab region and the world at large”:

It added, “Despite reservations to the human rights record of Morocco and Lebanon, the signatory organisations find them best candidates in the Arab region across Asia and Africa, taking into account the positive democratic and human rights developments in both states over the last years”.

These include Egypt’s Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners, the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights, and the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights; Syria’s Organisation for Human Rights, the Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies, and the Arab Organisation for Human Rights; the Bahraini Youth Society for Human Rights; and Oman’s Gulf Centre for Press Freedom.

Other are Saudi Arabia’s Centre for Human Rights; the Libyan League for Human Rights; Tunisia’s National Council for Liberties; Yemen’s Organisation Human Rights; the UAE’s Association for Jurists; the Iraqi Association for Human Rights; the Sudanese Organisation Against Torture; the Moroccan Organisation for Human Rights; and Lebanon’s Association for the Defence of Rights and Liberties.

The U.S. has not applied for membership on the Council, but after initially opposing proposed changes as “cosmetic”, endorsed creation of the new body.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said, “The new U.N. Human Rights Council must be a clear departure from the discredited Commission on Human Rights or current efforts to improve the protection of human rights will be undermined.”

“Changes in the design of the human rights body cannot be solely cosmetic,” Bolton told closed-door negotiations on the new council. “The United States will not support artificial changes,” he said.

“Recreating the Human Rights Commission with only a name change, while replicating all of its flaws, will simply serve to undermine the goal that most of us, but sadly not all, share – namely, the promotion of freedom, liberty, and human rights,” the ambassador said in pressing for a streamlined, action-oriented mandate that focuses on abuses of civil and political rights.

The proposed new Council will have 47 members compared with 53 in the outgoing Human Rights Commission, which has been criticised for accommodating “habitual human rights abusers” as some of its members.

Membership in the new Council shall be based on equitable geographic distribution and seats shall be distributed among regional groups: 13 for the African Group; 13 for the Asian Group; eight for the Latin American and Caribbean group; six for the Eastern European Group; and seven for the Western European and Other States Group.

All members, who will have term limits, will serve for three years but will not be eligible for immediate re-election after two consecutive terms.

The General Assembly, by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting, may suspend the rights of membership in the Council of a member of the Human Rights Council that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights.

U.S. human rights advocacy groups have generally been supportive of the new council as “the best we can get”.

For example, Amnesty International USA, one of the more influential U.S. human rights groups, told IPS, “We have not singled out specific countries that should be opposed, but instead, we have compiled information about the human rights records of the various candidate states, and we’ll let those records do the talking.”

Amnesty’s Mary Shaw told IPS, “Amnesty members have been petitioning the ministers of foreign affairs in their respective countries to elect a strong Human Rights Council composed of members states who are demonstrably committed to effective promotion and protection of human rights.”

The Council’s predecessor, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, has been considered an international bad joke for years. Its members included some of the most notorious rights violators, who routinely used their membership to stymie sanctions against themselves and their allies.

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