Vuk Jeremić (fourth from left), President of the General Assembly's sixty-seventh session, speaks with delegates on the floor of the General Assembly Hall, in advance of the elections held by the Assembly for eighteen members of the Human Rights Council. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 12 2012 (IPS)

When the former Human Rights Commission was partially dominated by countries accused of political repression, a U.S. congressman ridiculed the U.N. body where, he said, “inmates were taking over the asylum.”

“When lunatics take over, responsible people are forced to act,” snapped Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (Republican of California) back in 2001, even as he threatened to cut off U.S funds.

He was livid that the Human Rights Commission (since replaced by the Human Rights Council) had kept the United States out, but embraced Libya, Sudan, Cuba and China.

But judging by the strong negative reactions by international human rights groups over elections to the Council Monday, there has been little or no progress in shutting out violators from the 47-member Geneva based Human Rights Council (HRC).

The 193-member General Assembly elected 18 countries to serve on the HRC, the highest-policy making body on human rights, for a period of three years beginning next January.

The countries include Argentina, Brazil, Cote d’Ivoire, Estonia, Ethiopia, Gabon, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Montenegro, Pakistan, South Korea, Sierra Leone, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Venezuela.

Currently, all seats on the Council are allotted by regional groups: Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean States, and Western European (and other States).

But as a general rule, most regional groups match their nominations to available vacancies, thereby eliminating competition, and ensuring seats for all their declared candidates.

At Monday’s elections, the entire slate by Asians, Africans, East Europeans and Latin Americans sailed through: five African countries for five vacant seats; two East European countries for two vacancies; five Asian countries for five vacant seats; and three Latin American countries for three vacancies.

The only competition was in Western European group where five countries – Germany, Greece, Ireland, Sweden and the United States – battled it out for three vacant seats.

The winners were Germany, Ireland and the United States. The only requirement was 97 votes.

Asked whether competitive elections would remain a lost cause, Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, told IPS: “I don’t think it is a lost cause at all.”

She pointed out that only Africa has a “principled reliance on rotation rather than competition”, and Kenya was willing to challenge that this year.

“The key is to get states that care about having a stronger, more effective HRC to run,” she added. “Once they are in the race, human rights activists from the country, the region, and the world will work hard to see that the states that will make the greatest contribution are successful.”

She said “to call the vote in the General Assembly an election gives this process way too much credit.”

Until there is real competition for seats in the Human Rights Council, its membership standards will remain more rhetoric than reality, she added.

Jose Luis Diaz, Amnesty International’s U.N. representative, told IPS the best way for U.N. member states to stop non-competitive elections for the Human Rights Council is to declare loudly and clearly that they won’t stand for them and to vote accordingly.

“What we saw today is that most member states are not quite ready to do that, as only seats reserved for the Western group were contested,” he said. “That’s scandalous because it means that there is no real competition for many of the seats on the Council, contrary to what the resolution creating that body foresaw.”

He said this has a number of negative implications, including undermining accountability and transparency.

As part of a closed slate, as most candidates in this election were, contenders are practically guaranteed a spot in the Council.

“What incentive do you have then to demonstrate that you deserve a seat because you’re a good domestic and global human rights citizen?” Diaz said.

Being part of a closed slate does not automatically mean a state is a human rights abuser, but why fear competition to bring out the best representatives to promote and protect rights? He pointed out.

“I hope there will be growing attention to the lack of competition and that that will lead to more open slates,” he added.

In a statement released here, Human Rights Watch said by using a rotation system that virtually guarantees seats to countries, whether or not they meet membership standards, the African Group has effectively rejected the principle of competitive elections.

Countries with stronger human rights records in Africa have been unwilling to challenge the African Group’s standing practice of putting forward closed slates.

When Kenya declared its candidacy for the Human Rights Council at the end of July, HRW said, it briefly appeared that the African Group might buck this trend.

However, Sudan withdrew its bid for a seat in September under pressure, leaving Africa again with a closed slate of five candidates for five seats.

The Human Rights Watch statement noted that in past years, human rights organisations have mounted successful campaigns against the candidacies of Belarus (2007), Sri Lanka (2008), and Azerbaijan (2009), while Iran (2010) and Syria (2011) withdrew their candidacies under pressure from human rights groups.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an Asian diplomat told IPS that U.S. killings of civilians by drones – whether by accident or by design – in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan also places the United States in an ambivalent situation.

This, he said, has been made much worse by accusation of torture and water-boarding by U.S. forces, which are considered violations of human rights.

U.S. counterterrorism measures are under intense scrutiny from United Nations (U.N.) experts and civil rights groups declaring drone strikes illegal under current frameworks.

During the 20th Session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva from Jun. 18 to Jul. 6, these experts declared such measures in urgent need of greater accountability and transparency.

Targeted-killing programs, including drone strikes, are “a strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability”, wrote former special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston in his 2010 report to the council.

A drone launches from the deck of the USS Lassen. The legality of U.S. drone strikes is coming under increasing scrutiny and questioning. Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery/ CC by 2.0

Two years later, strategies that the United States justifies as a necessary response to terrorism remain questionable both in legality and according to humanitarian principles.

Collateral Damage

Used by the United States in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, drones have quickly become the counterterrorist weapon of choice. Accompanying drone strikes is collateral damage – military terminology for civilian casualties – which has subsequently become a central issue.

Drone technology itself is not inaccurate. But targets are often imprecise, as they are based on intelligence pinpointing suspected terrorists or areas of suspicious activity. Ensuring that innocent bystanders are absent from populated areas where terrorist activity has been identified is a challenge that all airborne military operations face.

In Pakistan, many civil rights activists vehemently oppose U.S. drone attacks. Among them is former cricketer Imran Kahn, leader of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party, who believes drone attacks are illegal on the grounds that they kill innocent civilians.

At the Human Rights Council Tuesday, Christof Heyns, current special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, called for more transparency and accountability from the United States. He urged that a framework be developed and adhered to, and pressed for accurate records of civilian deaths.

According to a recent report in the New York Times, the U.S. government’s current method for counting civilian deaths takes an exceptionally broad view of legitimate targets, deeming all males of military age to be terrorist combatants.

This methodology goes some way towards explaining the gulf between the calculations of independent media reports and official figures, which claim that civilian casualties are minimal.

An Associated Press investigation found that “the drone strikes were killing far fewer civilians than many Pakistanis are led to believe and that a significant majority of the dead were combatants”. Other reports, however, estimate hundreds of civilian casualties in the Pakistani region.

Dangerous global rules

“The United States has cobbled together its own legal framework for targeted killing, with standards that are far less stringent than the law allows,” Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told the council Wednesday.

Shamsi also took issue with the lack of transparency of military programs based on “a secret legal criteria, entirely secret evidence, and a secret process”, she said.

In defence of its policy of secrecy, the U.S. government filed a 50-page brief just before a midnight deadline, Wednesday, which stated that “whether or not the CIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involved in targeted lethal operations remains classified”.

The report came in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU last year, which requested transparency on the killing of three American citizens in Yemen last year.

“The international community’s concern about the U.S. targeted killing program is continuing to grow because of the unlawfully broad authority our government asserts to kill ‘suspected terrorists’ far from any battlefield, without meaningful transparency or accountability,” Shamsi told IPS.

The lack of a legal framework allows for drone strikes to be implemented at will, in non-conflict zones and on the basis of loosely defined terrorist threats, without permission from the host nation.

“I think we’re in for very dangerous precedents that can be used by countries on all sides,” Heynes, the special rapporteur, said, voicing his concern regarding legal loopholes.

“In essence, drones cancel out national sovereignty,” Tom Engelhardt, co-author of Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050, told IPS. “The rules of the game are one country’s sovereignty trumps that of another.”

It is estimated that more than 50 nations have drones, are developing them, or are planning to buy them.

Citing a recent contributor to his blog, TomDispatch, Engelhardt described the unmanned aircraft as  “a technology that has morphed into a policy”.

Fuelling terror

In a written speech submitted to the council, John Brennan, U.S. counterterrorism chief, deemed the use of drones a legal, ethical and wise way of conducting sensitive counterterror operations.

According to Dyke Weatherington, deputy director responsible for acquisition oversight for the Department of Defence’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), “combatant commanders and warfighters place value in the inherent features of unmanned systems – especially their persistence, versatility, and reduced risk to human life.”

But disregarding national boundaries and the inability to distinguish innocent civilians from terrorists in targeted vicinities render drones a questionable means of countering terrorism.

In a report to the council Wednesday, Ben Emmerson, special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, underscored the U.N. General Assembly’s consensus that counterterrorism measures that abuse human rights actually help spread terrorism.

The deaths of innocent civilians alienate communities and hand terrorists a propaganda tool that can bolster recruitment.

“Human rights abuses have all too often contributed to the grievances which cause people to make the wrong choices and to resort to terrorism,” according to the unedited document.

“The Special Rapporteur strongly believes that human rights compliant counter-terrorism measures help to prevent the recruitment of individuals to acts of terrorism.”

Heyns urged compliance with humanitarian law through “strategies applied to prevent casualties, as well as measures in place to provide prompt, thorough, effective and independent public investigation of alleged violations”.

Nevertheless, he told reporters at the council’s meeting, “I don’t think we have the full answer to the legal framework; we certainly don’t have the answer to the accountability issues.”