Hearing from the Candidates (UN Version)

For the first time in its seventy-year history, the United Nations is engaged in an open and transparent process to select a secretary-general. Ban Ki-moon's term ends on December 31, 2016. The UN is widely expected to select a woman as its next leader and, in fact, four of the nine announced candidates are women.

The selection process has historically involved much behind-the-scenes negotiating as aspirants have worked quietly to secure the support of Security Council member states, who must nominate a secretary-general candidate, and General Assembly member states, who must actually elect the secretary-general. According to the UN's informal system of geographical rotation, the next secretary-general should come from Eastern Europe. Seven candidates are from Eastern Europe, but former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark and Portuguese diplomat Antonio Guterres are defying the convention with their candidacies.

This year, secretary-general candidates are engaging in informal dialogues with permanent representatives. The sessions, lasting two hours each, are being conducted today through Thursday in the Trusteeship Council chamber and are being televised live on UN Web TV.

To hear Antonio Guterres, the Portuguese candidate, present his opening statement--primarily in English but moving smoothly into French and Spanish as well--go here. Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, the current director-general of UNESCO and a candidate for secretary-general of the UN, can be seen interacting with the press here.

Lethal Autonomous Weapons and the CCW

Today in Geneva the CCW (Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons) Meeting of Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems got underway. The primary purpose of the meeting is to develop recommendations regarding potential controls on lethal autonomous weapons system (LAWS) to be considered by the Fifth Review Conference, a regularly scheduled meeting of parties to the CCW that will occur in December 2016.

Lethal autonomous weapons systems are, in effect, robots programmed to kill without direct human guidance. Just as self-driving cars have advanced to the point where no human interaction is required beyond the point of identifying a destination, weapons systems are now at the point where a mission, including the use of weapons, can be programmed by humans and then executed by the machine without further human interaction. Clearly there are many technological, political, legal, and ethical questions to be considered in the face of such an important development.

There is no shortage of scholars, NGOs, IGOs, and governments interested in weighing in on lethal autonomous weapons and their implications. A range of papers and presentations prepared for this week's Meeting of Experts is available on the UNOG (United Nations Office at Geneva) website here. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a key contributor to international humanitarian law, has weighed in with an argument for preserving human responsibility in decisions to kill. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a project that brings together a number of NGOs including Human Rights Watch and the Pugwash Conferences on Science & World Affairs, has articulated a similar position.

There are many reasons to hope that the Fifth Review Conference in December will be able to make progress toward a ban on fully autonomous lethal weapons systems.

Gassed

One hundred years ago, on April 22, 1915, German troops near the village of Gravenstafel along the Ypres Salient in Belgium released 170 tons of chlorine gas in an attack against the trenches occupied by French forces including units from Morocco and Algeria. The gas was released from canisters along the German line and allowed to drift with the wind toward the French line where it settled into the trenches. Soldiers scrambling out of the trenches to escape asphyxiation were hit with a withering fusillade from the Germans.

John Singer Sargent, Gassed (1919)

The French and colonial forces suffered approximately 6,000 casualties with many of the wounded being blinded and suffering serious lung damage. A four-mile wide gap in the defensive line was opened up by the attack, but the Germans were unprepared to exploit it fully.

Adam Hochschild's description of the attack in To End All Wars (pp. 140-41) is worth quoting at some length:

On April 22, 1915, near the battered city of Ypres, French soldiers and troops from French colonies in North Africa noticed a strange, greenish yellow mist billowing out of the German positions and blowing toward them in the wind. An unfamiliar smell filled the air. When the acrid cloud reached them, it was so thick that they couldn't see more than a few feet. Soldiers quickly found themselves gagging and choking, yellow mucus frothing out of their mouths. Hundreds fell to the ground in convulsions. Those who could still breathe fled, staggering into first-aid posts blue from suffocation and coughing blood, speechless but pointing desperately to their throats. In the next few days, Canadian troops fell victim as well. Whatever this mysterious cloud might be, it was heavier than air and sank into the trenches, hugging the earth and forcing soldiers to stick their heads out into a hail of bullets. "The chaps were all gasping and couldn't breathe," a sergeant remembered later. "And it was ghastly, especially for chaps that were wounded--terrible for a wounded man to lie there! The gasping, the gasping!"

The spring leaves just coming out on the trees shriveled; grass turned yellow and metal green. Birds fell from the air, and chickens, pigs, cows, and horses writhed in agony and died, their bodies rotting and bloating. The ever-fatter rats that normally swarmed through the trenches, keeping men awake by running over them in the dark on the way to feast on soldiers' corpses, themselves died by the thousands.

This was the first widespread use of poison gas--chlorine--on the Western Front. Deadly and painful as it could be, later forms of gas would be still worse. Like so much else about the war, chlorine was the product of an industrial economy, in this case made by a complex of eight large chemical firms in Germany's Ruhr region known as the IG cartel. Chlorine and its compounds had a long history in manufacturing, but its new use in warfare was an ominous landmark, seeming to open up a range of horrifying possibilities that had previously existed only in the realm of early science fiction.

Chastened by the experience of World War I in which even the Allied Powers eventually deployed chemicals, the international community attempted to close off the "range of horrifying possibilities." In 1925, the Geneva Protocol was adopted to ban the use of chemical and biological weapons in international conflicts. Significant gaps in the coverage of the Geneva Protocol were closed with the adoption in 1993 of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to which 190 states are party. The CWC prohibits not only the use but the manufacture and stockpiling of chemical weapons.

Credible evidence indicates that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons--including chlorine gas--with devastating effects on civilians in recent attacks conducted in violation of Syria's obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and UN Security Council Resolution 2118 (2013). Acting on the basis of findings by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Security Council, on March 6, 2015, adopted Resolution 2209 threatening enforcement action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter in the event of further use of chemical weapons.

It seems unlikely that the Security Council will be able to back up its threat to punish Syria for its use of chemical weapons given the continued intransigence of Russia and China on matters related to Syria's civil war. However, both states voted for Resolution 2209. Both are also paying a diplomatic price for their grossly immoral position.

 

Colonialism and Presidential Sovereignty

I have just finished reading, for the second time, Paul Collier's 2009 book, Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. It is the kind of book that is useful to read and think about when embarking on a research project because it addresses important questions with creative methods of enquiry. In this case, the important questions are ones related to political and economic development that were introduced in Collier’s 2007 book, The Bottom Billion.

In any re-reading, different points from those encountered in previous readings are likely to stand out. This time, one of the points that struck me was an observation Collier makes about the relationship between the colonial experience of most states in the developing world and their governments' attitudes toward sovereignty. It is not an especially original observation, but it is important nonetheless. Collier writes (on page 200):

The most enduring legacy of the colonial experience is the excessive respect given both within the societies of the bottom billion, and by those who are concerned about their fate, to the notion of national sovereignty. The sentiment “never again” impedes serious thought. In reality, the typical society of the bottom billion does not have national sovereignty. It has yet to become a nation as opposed to a state: so it lacks the cohesion needed to produce effective restraints upon either the conduct of elections or the subsequent power of the winner. As a result, it has presidential sovereignty. No wonder presidents are jealous of national sovereignty: they are jealous of their own power.

When the world's dictators address the United Nations, as many do during the General Assembly's period for opening statements each September, they generally speak about the importance of respect for state sovereignty and the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of states, not human rights and the emerging responsibility to protect norm. In September 2012, Equatorial Guinea's president, Teodoro Obiang, told the assembled delegates in the UNGA, "We understand that international peace and security depend critically on compliance with the principles of international law: respect for the independence, territorial integrity, and national sovereignty of each state; the sovereign equality of nations and non-interference in the internal affairs of other states; the respect for and fulfillment of international commitments, and the promotion of friendly relations and reciprocal cooperation and equitable benefits among states." In his 2013 speech before the UNGA, one that prompted the U.S. delegation to walk out, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president since 1980, condemned western sanctions against his regime as a violation of "fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter on state sovereignty and non-interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state." He concluded by declaring, "Zimbabwe will never be a colony again."

In a similar vein, Uganda's Yoweri Museveni used his speech before the UNGA last year to condemn the International Criminal Court for its indictment of several high-ranking Kenyan officials in connection with post-election violence in 2007-2008. Museveni called the ICC's involvement in Kenya a form of arrogance akin to the arrogance of former colonial powers, whom he called "the old mistake makers." Rwanda's Paul Kagame also condemned the ICC's Kenyan case in his 2013 UNGA address. He stated, "Instead of promoting justice and peace, [the ICC] has undermined efforts at reconciliation and served only to humiliate Africans and their leaders, as well as served the political interests of the powerful."

These few quickly assembled examples of African leaders--dictators, mostly--using their brief moments in the global spotlight to demand respect for sovereignty seem to me to illustrate Collier's point about presidential sovereignty. What Collier would call Mugabe's "sell-by date" passed long ago. The elections he has held have been shams and Zimbabweans struggle to feed themselves while Mugabe amasses a vast, illicit, and personal fortune that he is far too old to enjoy. The same is true of Obiang, who came to power (in a military coup) a year earlier than Mugabe and has repeatedly tried to legitimize his corrupt regime with sham elections.

The sovereignty that dictators defend so vigorously has nothing to do with the rights of their peoples; they have none. This is why sovereignty is conditional and the right to non-intervention must be understood in light of human rights.

War and Peacekeeping

On the same day that President Obama paid homage to Americans who died fighting in World War I on a visit to a cemetery in Belgium, I saw the monument honoring Canada's war dead that stands in front of City Hall in Toronto. The Toronto Cenotaph, modeled after a similar monument in London, was originally designed to honor only those who died in World War I. Thus, the Cenotaph bears the names of the places in Belgium and France where Canadian soldiers fought: Ypres, Somme, Passchendaele, Amiens, and others.

After World War II, however, the dates of that great conflict were engraved on the monument.  After all, Canadians fought and died in that war, too. The Cenotaph also bears the dates 1950-1953, testifying to the fact that Canadians died in the Korean War.

There are no other wars noted on the Cenotaph, but at the bottom--engraved on both sides of the base--is the word "Peacekeeping." It is a reminder that Canadians have served all over the world in peacekeeping missions and that some have died in the course of those missions--in the Golan Heights, in the Belgian Congo, in Cyprus, in Haiti, and elsewhere.

Dulce et decorum est pro pax mori.

On Drones and the Law

Recently the UN Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism, Ben Emmerson, presented his third annual report. This report focuses on the use of drones in counter-terrorism operations with special emphasis on civilian casualties in drone strikes.

The report notes that while the number of drone attacks in Pakistan declined in 2013, drone strikes increased in Afghanistan and in Yemen. The decline in Pakistan came amid complaints from the Pakistani government that U.S. drone strikes were undermining its authority.

Paragraph 71 of the report lays out a series of questions regarding the legal status of drone strikes and suggests that there is "an urgent and imperative need to reach a consensus between States" on the answers to these questions. Included among the questions are these:

• Is the international law principle of self-defence confined to situations in which an armed attack has already taken place, or does it entitle a State to carry out pre-emptive military operations against a non-State armed group on the territory of another State, without the territorial State's consent, where it judges that there is an imminent risk of attack to its own interests? . . .
• Does international humanitarian law permit the targeting of persons directly participating in hostilities who are located in a non-belligerent state, and, if so, in what circumstances? . . .
• In the context of non-international armed conflict, when (and under what circumstances) does international humanitarian law impose an obligation to capture rather than kill a legitimate military target where this is feasible?

While the Special Rapporteur is no doubt correct that the international community thus far has failed to reach a consensus view on these (and other) matters, the report notes (in Paragraph 31) that on February 25, 2014, the European Parliament adopted a resolution (by a vote of 534 to 49) that concludes that "drone strikes outside a declared war by a State on the territory of another State without the consent of the latter or of the UN Security Council constitute a violation of international law and of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of that country."

The complete text of the 21-page report is available here. For the Guardian's take on the story, go here.

MQ-9 Reaper over Afghanistan (USAF Photo / Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt)

To Sweeten the Deal?

What do Dennis Rodman and 10,000 tons of sugar have in common? You can insert your own punch line, but a new report from the panel of experts appointed by the United Nations Security Council to monitor the sanctions regime imposed on North Korea suggests that both may have been involved in the shipment of prohibited goods.

Last summer, Panama intercepted a North Korean ship traveling from Cuba to North Korea with 10,000 tons of sugar in its hold. Beneath the sugar were containers holding two disassembled MiG-21 jet fighters and fifteen MiG-21 engines, all being shipped to the DPRK for repair. (North Korea is one of the few places in the world where Soviet-made weapons from the 1950s can be sent for repair.) The report, according to the New York Times, shows that "North Korea is using increasingly deceptive techniques to circumvent international sanctions."

Reuters reported recently that the panel of experts was investigating whether Rodman, whose travels to North Korea were lampooned last fall in this brilliant ad for Foot Locker, may have violated the ban on shipments of luxury goods (including spirits) into the DPRK.

Meanwhile, amid dancing in the streets, North Koreans have just voted unanimously to approve Kim Jong-un and his entire slate of parliamentary candidates.

A Warning to the Supreme Leader

On Friday, the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), a body established by the United Nations Human Rights Council, released the results of a year-long investigation into conditions in North Korea. The 372-page report was characterized by the BBC as "one of the most detailed and devastating ever published by the United Nations."

A letter from the Commission of Inquiry dated January 20, 2014, warned Kim Jong-un that he could face international prosecution for crimes against humanity under the doctrine of command responsibility. After describing the concept of military command responsibility, the letter states, "On the same basis, a civilian superior will incur personal criminal responsibility if (1) the civilian superior knew, or consciously disregarded, information which clearly indicated that subordinates within his effective responsibility and control were committing crimes against humanity, and (2) the civilian superior fails to take all necessary and reasonable measures within the superior's power to prevent or repress their commission or to submit the matter to competent authorities for investigation and prosecution."

The Commission of Inquiry's findings and recommendations are detailed and extensive. Some are addressed to China, urging respect for the legal principle of non-refoulement. The report urges the UN Security Council to refer the situation in North Korea to the International Criminal Court for investigation and prosecution. These and many other recommendations are offered against the backdrop of this stinging rebuke to the United Nations:

The fact that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as a State Member of the United Nations, has for decades pursued policies involving crimes that shock the conscience of humanity raises questions about the inadequacy of the response of the international community. The international community must accept its responsibility to protect the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from crimes against humanity, because the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has manifestly failed to do so. In particular, this responsibility must be accepted in the light of the role played by the international community (and by the great powers in particular) in the division of the Korean peninsula and because of the unresolved legacy of the Korean War. These unfortunate legacies help not only to explain the intractability of the human rights situation but also why an effective response is now imperative. (Para. 1217)

The findings of this report may offer nothing new in terms of our understanding of what has been happening in North Korea, but the Commission of Inquiry deserves gratitude for thoroughly documenting the extraordinary human rights disaster existing there and boldly challenging the international community to move beyond the status quo that has persisted since the end of the Korean War. It will be interesting to see how the UN Human Rights Council, which must accept or reject the report's conclusions and recommendations, will now respond.

Yes, Virginia, There Is an East Sea

Is it the "Sea of Japan" or the "East Sea"? In 1992, South Korea and North Korea raised an objection before the Sixth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names regarding the use of "Sea of Japan" to refer to the body of water that lies between Japan and the Korean peninsula. The Korean position is that the term "Sea of Japan" became common only when the Japanese occupied Korea and that the earlier name, "East Sea," is therefore more appropriate. Japan argues that its preferred name actually predates both Japan's occupation of Korea and the common use of "East Sea" to refer to the body of water.

It now appears the matter has been settled.

Joining the state's Senate, the Virginia House of Delegates has voted (81-15) to require state-approved textbooks, when referring to the "Sea of Japan," to note also that the body of water is called the "East Sea." Governor Terry McAuliffe is expected to sign the bill into law.

The BBC reports that Japanese ambassador to the United States Kenichiro Sasae contacted Governor McAuliffe to warn him that Japan's economic ties to the Commonwealth of Virginia could be damaged by passage of the bill, but McAuliffe seems to have been influenced more by the hundreds of Virginians of Korean descent who descended on Richmond to lobby for it.

The CRC and the Holy See

As one of the 193 parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Holy See is required to report periodically on its progress in implementing the rights protected in the agreement. According to Article 44,

States Parties undertake to submit to the Committee, through the Secretary-General of the United Nations, reports on the measures they have adopted which give effect to the rights recognized herein and on the progress made on the enjoyment of those rights

(a) Within two years of the entry into force of the Convention for the State Party concerned;

(b) Thereafter every five years.

For the first time since its initial report to the CRC in 1994, the Holy See has submitted a report required by Article 44 to the Committee. Senior Vatican officials, including Bishop Charles J. Scicluna, who prosecuted child sexual abuse cases for the Holy See until 2012, appeared before the CRC on January 16 to answer the Committee's questions. Yesterday the Committee issued its report (formally called Concluding Observations) on the Holy See's progress toward implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Committee's report condemned the Vatican for its many failures concerning child sexual abuse by priests. The report stated, "The committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators." The report stated that "the Holy See has consistently placed the preservation of the reputation of the church and the protection of the perpetrators above children's best interests, as observed by several national commissions of inquiry."

In response to questions from the CRC last year, representatives of the Holy See had argued that, as a state exercising jurisdiction only in the small territory of the Vatican, it was unable to subject priests living and working in the jurisdiction of other states to the kind of control suggested by the Committee. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), representing the Survivors' Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP), called this argument "disingenuous and misleading." The CRC also rejected this claim regarding the constraints imposed by territorial jurisdiction.

The child sexual abuse scandal was not the only issue covered in the Committee's Concluding Observations on the Holy See's report. In her comments for the media summarizing the report, CRC member Kirsten Sandberg said, "The Holy See's past statements on homosexuality have contributed to the social stigmatization of and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered adolescents and children raised by same-sex couples." This finding and a finding regarding the negative impacts of the Roman Catholic Church's teachings on contraception and abortion on adolescents (including young girls impregnated by rape) brought a response from the Vatican stating that "the Holy See . . . regret[s] to see in some points of the Concluding Observations an attempt to interfere with Catholic Church teaching on the dignity of the human person and in the exercise of religious freedom." 

Sandberg's summary of the Committee's report also noted, "The Holy See has not taken the necessary measures to protect and ensure justice for girls who were arbitrarily placed by their families, state institutions, and churches in the Magdalene Laundries of Ireland run by four congregations of Catholic sisters until 1996." This issue has recently gained renewed public attention through Philomena, a best film Oscar nominee currently in release. Judi Dench, who plays an Irish woman looking for the child she bore in one of the Magdalene Laundries many years before, received a best-actress nomination.

The power of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (and the other treaty bodies in the UN human rights system) is limited to the ability to applaud progress and shine a light on failures. Sometimes, though, that is enough to promote change. How Pope Francis responds to the CRC's spotlight on the Catholic Church's failure to protect children will be an important test of the character of his papacy. And for the Holy See, it will go a long way toward determining how much soft power remains. This is important because the Holy See has no other kind of power.

Karadžić and Mladić

Today in a courtroom of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, two of the chief architects of the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia during the 1990s came face to face. On trial for genocide and other crimes related to his role as the political leader of Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić called upon Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb military leader during the ethnic cleansing, to testify on his behalf. Mladić, whose trial for similar crimes is ongoing, denounced the court as "satanic" and refused to answer the substantive questions Karadžić presented, citing his health and his desire not to incriminate himself.

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Both Karadžić and Mladić are charged with genocide in connection with the fall of Srebrenica in 1995. Over 7500 Bosnian men were executed when the army of the Republika Srpska, commanded by Mladić, overran a poorly defended United Nations "safe area" that had been created in an effort to protect Bosnians fleeing fighting in surrounding communities.

Meanwhile, trials at the ICTY continue to raise questions regarding their length and cost. To address these questions, Stuart Ford offers a way to judge the complexity of cases in order to compare more accurately the efficiency of different courts. By the measures he employs, the ICTY fares well in comparison to courts handling similarly complex criminal cases.

Budgets and Booze

On Monday, Joseph Torsella, the U.S. ambassador for management and reform at the United Nations, told his colleagues in the Fifth Committee (the budget committee) that negotiations might be aided by an increase in sobriety among the delegates. Here are his exact words:

As for the conduct of negotiations, we make the modest proposal that the negotiation rooms should in future be an inebriation-free zone. While my government is truly grateful for the strategic opportunities presented by some recent practices, let's save the champagne for toasting the successful end of the session, and do some credit to the Fifth Committee's reputation in the process.

This is not something one hears often from diplomats.

For more, see this piece by Colum Lynch in Foreign Policy and this New York Times article.

COP18

On Monday, the 18th Conference of Parties (COP18) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 8th Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol will begin in Doha, Qatar. (The agenda is available here.) COP18 has a number of objectives, but the most important involves negotiations toward a climate change treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Under the Durban Platform agreed to at COP17 in Durban, South Africa last year, a new "legal outcome" is to be developed by 2015.

Nathan Hultman, a Brookings Institution fellow, provides an excellent summary of the road to Doha in this post. And, via Andrew C. Revkin's Dot Earth blog at the New York Times, there's this brief--but insightful--video on twenty years of climate change negotiations.

"Until Hell Freezes Over"

On this date in 1962, Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, uttered what may well be the most memorable line ever used in a Security Council debate. Before presenting the Security Council with photographic evidence of the Soviet missile buildup in Cuba, Stevenson asked, "Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.S.S.R. has placed and is placing medium- and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no—don’t wait for the translation—yes or no?"

When Zorin failed to answer, Stevenson continued:

"You can answer yes or no. You have denied they exist. I want to know if I understood you correctly. I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that’s your decision. And I am also prepared to present the evidence in this room." (emphasis added)

Stevenson (standing next to the easel in the photo below) proceeded to display evidence from American U-2 flights over Cuba of Soviet missile sites.

The BBC or the Onion News Network?

In a segment last week on "News at One" about Amnesty International's criticism of the UN Security Council over its failure to take decisive action in the face of atrocities in Syria, the BBC displayed two logos:  the familiar candle encircled by barbed wire of Amnesty International and the bird atop a globe with a banner reading "UNSC" that represents the United Nations Space Command.  If you didn't know there was a United Nations Space Command, you probably haven't played Halo, a science fiction video game series owned by Microsoft.  There is no logo for the UN Security Council, which would normally be represented by the UN logo, a blue globe flanked by laurel branches.

Here's the offending segment:

For more, go here.

The Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Americans generally view human rights abuses as problems that happen elsewhere.  The drama surrounding Chen Guangcheng's escape from house arrest and flight to the American Embassy in Beijing this past week--complete with front-page coverage in American newspapers--underscores the standard narrative that, when it comes to human rights, the United States is a beacon of hope in a dark world.  As a New York Times editorial put it yesterday, "We have little doubt of the Americans' commitment to Mr. Chen's safety and his cause."  And as if that weren't enough, the Times reminded its readers that "this episode is first and foremost an embarrassment for China and a glaring reminder of its abysmal mistreatment of its own citizens."

The Times' editorial board probably got it right about Chen and the American commitment to the cause of human rights in China, even if that commitment does sometimes give way before other considerations in the Sino-American relationship.  From what I can tell, however, the New York Times has not reported anywhere in its pages the conclusions of James Anaya regarding the failures of the United States to respect the rights articulated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  Anaya is the special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.  His mandate, renewed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2007, is primarily to "gather information on alleged violations of the rights of indigenous peoples" and forward recommendations to the UN on means of remedying those violations.  At the conclusion of a twelve-day fact-finding trip in the United States, Anaya stated that "it is evident that more robust measures are needed to address the serious issues affecting Native American, Alaska Native and Hawaiian peoples in the United States, issues that are rooted in a dark and complex history whose legacies are not easy to overcome."

Although his formal recommendations have not yet been drafted, Anaya suggested that lands taken from Native Americans should, in some cases, be restored.  The Black Hills of South Dakota, the ancestral home of the Oglala Sioux, were specifically mentioned.  "I'm talking," he said, "about restoring to indigenous peoples what obviously they're entitled to and they have a legitimate claim to in a way that is not divisive but restorative."

Official policies toward Native Americans were shameful in the nineteenth century (as when the U.S. Congress in 1877 passed a law unilaterally reversing concessions made to the Oglala Sioux in an 1868 treaty), but they haven't been much better in the twenty-first century.  Many Native American communities suffer from poverty, unemployment, suicide, and alcoholism rates that far outpace national averages.  The reasons are not hard to see.  From the perspective of those outside the United States, the fundamental problem is a long history of human rights abuse.

Earrings on a Hog

Former Texas agriculture commissioner, author, lecturer, activist, and raconteur Jim Hightower often says "you can put earrings on a hog, but it won't hide the ugliness."  Teodoro Obiang, dictator of Equatorial Guinea for the last three decades, has expended considerable time and effort--not to mention millions of dollars--to burnish his image.  After four years of controversy, part of the effort succeeded yesterday as the executive board of UNESCO voted 33 to 18 (with 7 abstentions) to accept a donation from Obiang to establish the UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences.

Supporters of the award on the executive board included representatives of African states, China, India, Russia, and Brazil.  European members, the United States, and others voted "no" on accepting the donation for the award.  Representatives from Europe and the United States have consistently opposed the award on the grounds that (1) the money being donated is apparently from Equatorial Guinea's public treasury, in spite of the fact that the country has serious unmet public sector needs, and (2) the abysmal human rights record of the Obiang regime makes it inappropriate for a UN body to accept such a donation.

Earlier this week, the UNCAC Coalition, a network of over 300 NGOs, issued a letter to UNESCO on the subject of the prize.  In part, the letter reads:

The UNCAC Coalition strongly opposes the establishment of this award, funded from the public treasury of Equatorial Guinea and yet named after its long-term head of state. As we already communicated in 2010, we believe that the award and its endorsement of Mr. Obiang are fundamentally contrary to the spirit and principles of the United Nations, as well as to UNESCO’s constitutional goals. President Obiang heads a country that has been ranked by Transparency International as among the most corrupt in the world, whose government is known for well-documented brutality and whose citizens live in poverty despite the country’s oil riches. In more than 30 years of government, Mr. Obiang has missed the opportunity to use oil revenues, and other sources of government income, to improve the life of the people in Equatorial Guinea or even to make transparent what those revenues are.

Freedom House, which has named Equatorial Guinea among the "Worst of the Worst" in terms of civil and political rights, opposed the award, as did a coalition of seven civil society organizations including the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España, Association Sherpa, the Committee to Protect Journalists, EG Justice, Global Witness, Human Rights Watch, and the Open Society Justice Initiative.  Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “The UNESCO-Obiang prize is irreversibly tainted by its association with the repression and high-level corruption of President Obiang’s government.”

Obiang seems to have overcome the pressure exerted by Western democracies and human rights NGOs by framing the issue as a matter of Africa against the West.  The New York Times quoted Zimbabwe's UNESCO representative, David Hamadziripi, to this effect: “We believe that the decision we’ve just taken will send a very important message, that a lot of good comes out of Africa, and that Africa can and does contribute in international cooperation and is not just a recipient of the good will of others.”

Score one for the dictators.

Meeting the MDGs

During the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders agreed to a set of objectives to be met by 2015.  These Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were designed to address seemingly intractable development and human security issues.  In spite of the global economic recession that began in 2008, the goal of cutting in half the number of people living in extreme poverty has been met ahead of schedule,according to new data from the World Bank.

The New York Times reports:

For the first time since the World Bank started keeping statistics in 1981, poverty fell in every region of the world on a three-year timeframe. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty fell below 50 percent for the first time. And between 1981 and 2008, poverty fell to just less than a quarter of the developing world’s population from more than half.

Another of the MDGs--cutting in half the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015--has also been met according to data jointly reported by UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

Syria: "Widespread, Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations"

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic has issued its report to the United Nations Human Rights Council.  The report concludes, among other things, that Syrian government forces "have committed widespread, systematic and gross human rights violations, amounting to crimes against humanity, with the apparent knowledge and consent of the highest levels of the State. Anti-Government armed groups have also committed abuses, although not comparable in scale and organization with those carried out by the State" (A/HRC/19/69, para. 126).  In an apparent reference to the veto exercised on February 4 by Russia and China of a Security Council resolution designed to pressure the Assad regime to negotiate a settlement of the conflict in Syria, the report notes that "diverging agendas within a deeply divided international community complicate the prospects for ending the violence" (A/HRC/19/69, para. 122).

An African Criminal Court?

The mention of an "African Criminal Court" is usually a sardonic reference to the fact that all seven of the International Criminal Court investigations currently open involve African states.  Yesterday, at the 18th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, outgoing chairperson Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo actually proposed the creation of an African Criminal Court.  Obiang's stated rationale is that the International Criminal Court has discriminated against African leaders.  It is an objection that is consistent with other positions Obiang has taken to try to insulate African dictators, himself included, from external scrutiny.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, addressing the summit on Sunday, defended the record of the ICC in Africa by noting that many of the investigations have been supported by Africans themselves.  He also noted that the newly elected chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda of Ghana, is an African.  Speaking to a Voice of America reporter, Ban argued that the ICC has handled its responsibilities well, using the situations in Cote d'Ivoire and Libya as examples.

In his speech to the AU, Ban urged the assembled leaders to "adopt a preventive approach to human rights."  The Arab Spring, he said, demonstrated that "police power is no match for people power seeking dignity and justice."  Ban also urged African leaders to "live up to the ideals of the Universal Declaration" by ending discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.

The African Union Summit took place in a new headquarters building constructed at a cost of $200 million by the government of China.  The building, one of many examples of Chinese largesse in Africa, exemplifies the ongoing battle for hearts and minds--and resources--across the continent.  While the West views Africa (along with the Middle East) as one of the last bastions of political repression--a bastion breached by the Arab Spring--China appears to view the dictators of Africa as allies in the defense of sovereignty against the broad incursions made by the ideals of human rights and international justice.