The world has turned upside down: UN institutions are now being used to undermine human rights. This is already a threat to the legitimacy of the UN, and in the long run, its existence. The paradox is that this is happening in the very bodies that were supposed to work for human rights. The Human Rights Council, however, was set up by region, not by human rights standards, and the Conference of Islamic States, along with Russia, China and some African states, has a two-thirds majority.
These countries agree on one thing: to prevent criticism of the situation in their own countries. Therefore, they agreed that the special rapporteur on freedom of expression should also report on abuses of freedom of expression. There is no better example of the undermining of the UN.
Roy Brown is the former head of the International Humanist and Ethical Union and has followed the process closely.
By Roy Brown
The UN Human Rights Council on Thursday adopted a resolution against “defamation of religions” – what’s behind it?
Slowly, the sun is setting on what history will remember as one of the highlights of civilisation: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The first salvo was fired by Ayatollah Khomeini, who after taking power in 1979, declared: “If we want to know something about human rights, we don’t go to the United Nations, we go to the Holy Qur’an.
Since then, Islamic states and their allies have worked to undermine the Universal Declaration and its international law equivalent, the Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Within the UN system, structures and procedures to ensure that the ICCPR is consistently observed have been undermined and weakened in the name of ‘cultural difference’. The special rapporteurs mandated to document human rights violations have been redefined to reduce their scope. In particular, a new “code” has been issued which states that the objectives of the investigation, the states being investigated, have the right to challenge the report’s findings before they are published.
At the same time the very notion of human rights – they are universal and rooted in the individual – has been challenged with the introduction of rights that are embedded in groups, and regional and cultural “variations” of universality.
The sad truth.
Finally, freedom of expression is increasingly threatened by Islamic states seeking special protections against “defamation of their religion”.What is behind all this?
The sad truth is that the majority of member states of the UN Human Rights Council are united on a very specific goal – and it is not to promote and protect human rights, but to prevent the exposure of their own human rights violations.
The Human Rights Council as an institution lost out when the requirement for its member states to sign up to human rights legislation was dropped, the complete package (instead coming with a vague commitment to “work towards” universal acceptance). Even more serious was the decision not to select members according to the value of their human rights record, but by region. The result was a council of 47 member states, of which 17 are members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which, together with their allies, Russia, China and the group of African countries, have a two-thirds majority.
Exonerated from responsibility
The war of attrition against human rights was also waged with the so-called Cairo Declaration of 1990 on “Human Rights in Islam”. This document, according to the OIC, is not an alternative, but complementary, does not refer to the Universal Declaration, but asserts that Islam, the law of Sharia, is “the sole source” of interpretation of rights. Thus, Islamic countries officially absolve themselves of any responsibility for any human rights violations that are committed in the name of Islam.
In March 2008, at the initiative of the OIC, the Human Rights Council mandated the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression not only to report on violations of this right, but also on the “abuse” of this right. As a result, the mandate of the Rapporteur has been “turned upside down” as the Canadian delegate put it.
Silenced
The cumulative effect of these changes has been to increase the immunity of Islamic states in the Council from exposure of their own human rights violations. It is bad enough that this was the sole objective of these states, but they set themselves more ambitious goals, especially after the acceptance and adoption of the Islamic interpretation of human rights by the international community. In order to do so, they had to move to a frontal attack on freedom of expression. The method chosen was to introduce a resolution to “combat defamation of religion”. The stated aim was to “prevent the propagation of negative stereotypes about Islam”, including the link of Islam with violence and terror, as well as discrimination against Muslims. The unstated aim was to provide a comprehensive framework for the introduction of laws to silence all criticism of Islam, its laws and practices.
Resolutions to combat defamation of religion have now been adopted annually since 1999 by the Human Rights Council and by the UN General Assembly since 2007. Although not binding on states, it promotes and legitimises the adoption of blasphemy laws around the world – despite the fact that the concept of ‘defamation of religion’ has no legal validity in international law, and that the resolution is incompatible with the provisions of the Covenant, which guarantees freedom of expression.
Not only does this concept have no legal value, the resolution is also unnecessary, as the problem addressed above – increasing discrimination and incitement to hatred against Muslims – is already found in international law. Article 20 of the ICCPR sets out the measures that states must take to prohibit the promotion of hatred and violence. It is clear, therefore, that the OIC has other reasons to push with these resolutions, namely to transpose restrictions on freedom of expression, which already exist in Islamic states, into international law and thus to silence criticism of Islam in the rest of the world.
Roy W. Brown is the former President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union