Outrage over the Qaddafi regime has given tired institutions a new lease of life

Two comments on the article:

1. I completely agree that the UN Human Rights Council is a sham and will continue to be so until dictatorships and human rights violators will be dismissed. For example, such "shining" paragons of human rights are on the council: Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Russia,Cuba, Uganda, and more can be named.
In short, this body is ruled by a majority of abusers of human rights, and should be totally dismantled and reassembled under new rules that only countries with a proper human rights record to join.

2. UN Watch is not simply "a lobby group that counters UN criticism of Israel" as the writer would have it. It is an organization which monitors the UN Human Rights Council. What UN Watch has shown is that the UNHRC is ignoring human rights violations of Arab and Asian countries (even when witnesses come forward and testify) while investing most of its time to make political attacks against Israel. UN Watch shows how that body (which was chaired by Libya for a while), became an anti-Israel tool in the hands of Arab countries and their lackeys. The main complaint of UN Watch is not that Israel is attacked, but that human rights violations worldwide go unnoticed and unchecked as they are ignored by the only international body that is supposed to condemn and stop them.

You can read much more here:
http://www.unwatch.org/site/c.bdKKISNqEmG/b.1277549/k.D7FE/UN_Watch__Mon...

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but why do I get the sneaky feeling that this "near-unanimity" agaist the Gaddafi junta, that you wax poetic about, has more to do with the soaring oil prices, than just genuine concern for the innocent victims of Butcher Gaddafi's blood-soaked atrocities?

Whatever be the reason, the 'Butcher of Libya' needs to be removed & tried for crimes against humanity, without further ado..

So Venezuela is the lone dissenter this time, big deal. Wasn’t US the lone dissenter and vetoed a security council bill a couple of weeks ago? I don’t remember TE made any mention of that. I know two wrongs don't make a right, but it sure makes a little even.

@BilboBilbo:

You got a set of countries in mind with regard to human rights? Just saying, coz if it comes to the human race, it seems that the countries that you mention total up to around half of global population - if you take China out, I think it's around a quarter or something like that.

And this is going to sound really cyncial, but who's to judge which country has the best human rights record, and by what time frame? You don't even need to stretch it back to a couple of centuries, post WW-2 events would sufficiently disqualify - in my mind - a large number of developed economies. But that's my two cents.

In any case you're right. The UN Human Rights Council does seem like its a sham - maybe a new set of proactive rules or certain mandates are needed for the council.

P/s: I'm a Malaysian of Chinese ethnicity :)

The UN is absurd and it can't be otherwise, because its very idea is absurd. On the bright side Iran has been just made a member of the commission on the status of woman. With Saudi Arabia in the executive board of women right committee, this show is not going to stop.

:D :D

I was worried a bit about Gaddafi as I am one of those who are going to miss his robes and hours long orations in the GA, but then with Ahmadinejad and Chavez, this circus called the UN is probably in safe hands

:D :D

But I agree with the article that expulsion of Libya from the UNHRC, at the time when Gaddafi is bombing Libyan cities while his people are gunning down demonstrators in Tripoli, is an impressive feat in itself. I mean, come on guys, after this how you can resist becoming another liberal idiot.. oops I mean liberal idealist as this venerable publication calls itself and its friends.

This was a very interesting look into countries' engagement with the UN, but is the crisis in Libya that unlikely a unifier? To the best of my memory, the last watershed event to be debated in the UN was Iraq; and although there was much less agreement on what to do there, it says something about how the international community utilized what could be its greatest tool.

The first thing we can extract from the UN Libya meetings is that the powers that matter are taking the matter at least somewhat seriously. If events continue to escalate, history suggests we could see further votes (in the Security Council) on taking "real" action in Libya. Also, it offers a not so refreshing insight into the fair-weather (or foul-weather if that's how you'd prefer to look at it) relationship countries - especially the US - have with the UN. It raises the question "is the UN just a forum for countries to gather and condemn and pick the brains of their counterparts when blood is being shed?"

Not to downplay the humanitarian, social, and philanthropic accomplishments of the UN, but it would seem that major powers only put the effort in at the UN when there's a crisis to be resolved.

Siege Tripoli. Control the oil exports. OPEC has a living standard habit. To encourage steps back to stability, exchange arms to the rebels for oil. Arabia needs value added refineries for their oil exports. As am example Japan's economy has relatively few natural resources, but that their exports are labor value added from imports.

What do people expect? The U.N isn't a liberal organization, it's an international organization. It has to work with international concerns and international interests.

Wonderful there is agreement.

However, the UN does not have any teeth. Without America to act as Sheriff, which the USA seem reluctant to do in the Libyan instance since it has no interests at risk, nothing of any significance will get done.

Apologies for being slightly off-topic, but given that the UN is deliberating no-fly zones, I offer the following thought:

Libya is a huge sparsely populated country, where the rebel advance has been stymied due to 2 factors: (a) Qaddafi controlling heavier weapons than the opposition , which has allowed (b) continued Qadaffi control of a limited number of key transport nodes. The Libyan airforce has been fairly irrelevant up till now in the conflict (so many airstrikes by Qaddafi's air force and still hardly any results to show for it). So if we really want to help the rebels and stop Qaddafi using weapons on his civilians, forget about the no fly zone as a largely pointless waste of resources (repeatedly bombing all the SAM sites in libya, etc). Instead, announce & ensure that any use of artillery or tanks by Qaddafi against the rebels will result in airstrikes on these heavy weapons. Unlike the Libyan airforce's airstrikes, these are likely to be highly effective. This would focus resources where it is most likely to go good, tip the military balance in the rebels favour, boost rebel morale by giving them real practical support on the ground, undermine the morale of those tribes still backing Qaddafi, set a clear trigger for intervention, and also set a limit on the extent of the intervention.

@soph1e
Problem with targeting heavy armor, is that it is one step away from actual invasion. I believe it was done against Serbia, invastion would have been the next step. Think it will be considered a step too far. People want to get involved on the side of the rebels, but know the consequences of doing so. Got to be people who actually buy into Qaddafi's latest rant, just fueling more hatred in the world. If people are going to hate you for trying to help them, just let them be. Unfortunately we live in an integrated world, where the mess of our neighbour tend to spill over to us...

It's about time someone else feels the heat. Hating the Jews *cough* Israel has always been the UN's primary unifier. It seems to be in vogue these days.

Time is of the essence if NATO is to declare a no fly zone. One does not choose when to surf, but one has to wait for nature to present the wave to catch. If action is not taken immediately, this chance to democratize Libya can be lost indefinitely--not to mention the humanity concern. As I understand it Colonel Muammar Qaddafi is only in control of Tripoli, with the rebels in control of the rest of Libya, leaving very finite targets for the no fly zone. President Barack Obama is a democrat, meaning he is more likely to be part of a team to act in any situation such as military, rather than act solely in the collation of the willing. A capital intensive military has the advantage of fighting in the countryside, where as labor intensive military chooses to fight room to room in the city.

So talking to Libyans, Qaddafi says he is standing up to American imperialism, but talking to the outside world, he says he is standing up to Al Qaeda. Call Qaddafi stubborn, outlandish, erratic--call him what you want, but don't call him stupid. Even he did not last for forty years by force alone.

I agree with Nirvana-bound. The "righteous indignation" that we are seeing from the U.N. is all about oil and all about money.

The members of the U.N. can point to the human rights abuses going on Libya all it wants, but the real bottom for the U.N. membership, simply put, is the bottom line. Anybody who thinks otherwise is just kidding themselves.

When you allow everyone, even gangsters and thugs, to vote on what morality is, then you get a "morality" that doesn't condemn the gangsters and thugs.

This is the essense of the problem with the UN Human Rights organization. The UN is the wrong place for such a group. The point of the UN is, first and foremost, to prevent another world war. This means that everyone has to be there. But when everyone is there, you lose the ability to make any moral judgments.

That does not mean that the UN is bad. It means it is unsuited to some of its roles.

First: HappyFish, "Raghead" is a racist term. Spew that nonsense somewhere else.

Second: The UN is an extremely important institution that is still VERY young in the eyes of history. Taking the long view, I would say the UN is to world government as the Protestant Parliament of Oliver Cromwell was to modern British government. Give it time. The transition to a unified world government WILL happen - and I would rather it be to an instituion like the UN (which values universal human rights, rule of law, arbitration and non-violent conflict resolution) as opposed to any other organization. The fact that UN Watch exists and is able to conduct its business pretty much unfettered is a testament to those values.

I predict that unifiying events, such as the ones we're witnessing now, regardless of the motivation behind it, will happen more frequently; as they do, they will lead to a path of success never before seen as humanity begins to answer the big questions (energy, food, disease, population) in a more unified and enlighted way.

Criticizing the UN is unfair. It is a political marketplace, not world government. The UN have no troops.

To the chagrin of the Imperialist forces, the opposition in the UN to their imperialist designs in the ME comes not from the usual quarters like Russia or China, but the large developing democracies like India and South Africa supported by a chorus of developing countries.

These small countries have the most to lose if this UN charade become a permanent fixture where the crony representative in UN freely issues the licence for Regime change from the outside Imperialist forces.