THE United States and human rights organisations are up in arms with the election of China, which stands accused of human rights violations against the Uighurs in Xinjiang, to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
Their concern is that if countries with a history of human rights abuses are allowed a seat in such a body, they will block any international criticism of their violations and weaken international human rights by shaping such discussions around non-interference in internal affairs of states, geopolitical speak for "mind your own business".
These are valid concerns. If countries with repressive human rights records make it to the UNHRC, then it makes a mockery of the council and the UN itself. There are two reasons why such things happen.
One, nations lack integrity. Absent integrity, the founding members of the UN made it the kingdom of the Permanent Five: the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China. An undemocratic international organisation with 193 member countries that only promotes the interests of the P5 cannot stand on the high moral ground of human rights.
Take the US. For long it has used torture as a national weapon against nations, though it only became blatantly clear during the Iraq war. American armed forces and civilians are taught how to execute the most gruesome of torture. The White House is well aware of this. It is for this reason US President Donald Trump stopped the International Criminal Court from investigating allegations of human rights violations by the Americans in Afghanistan.
What's worse, he sanctioned senior ICC officers through a presidential decree. Is this the action of a nation that respects human rights? No, we aren't diverting our attention from China. All we are saying is: stop human rights abuses and allow the ICC to try the accused and if found guilty, sentence them accordingly.
No nation, big or small, must interfere in the course of international justice. Might is never right. If not the US or China, who then should be in the UNHCR? Obviously, the countries that protect and respect human rights, though getting a handle over the rights could be a problem. To describe them as vague is being generous.
Professor Eric Posner, a human rights academic, has a more apt word: "spongy". In other words, human rights are what you want them to be. Not only countries but human rights organisations, too, pick and choose the rights their sponsors want to see promoted. Here, too, integrity is in short supply. The world can do with more.
This notwithstanding, Schnakenberg and Fariss have devised a human rights score that measures how a government protects the physical integrity of its people by taking into account torture, killing, extrajudicial executions and some such metrics. The rankings span seven decades up to 2017. In the 2017 table, there are 20 countries which scored well, a number good enough to man the UNHCR.
The top five are Luxembourg, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco and Palau. UNHRC may want to circulate the list to countries voting in members to the council. In the meanwhile, as Posner has suggested in his long read in The Guardian, a new approach to promoting human wellbeing is needed, an approach that is empirical and not ideological. We agree.
Only then will human rights law demand from Western nations what it does from the rest. Where there is integrity, there will be symmetry.