Enhancement of the Absurd - UN Human Rights Council
By Marion Edwyn Harrison (04/01/06)
Senate Majority Leader William H. Frist, M.D. (R-TN), more commonly known as Senator Bill Frist, yesterday initiated an effort to circumvent what probably is the most recent, but doubtless not the last, United Nations (UN) absurdity. (This description assumes the reader does not believe - maybe recognize? - that the UN, as it has aggrandized over the years, is not in and of itself an absurdity.) In a context relating to overall dues and other reforms, Representative Henry J. Hyde (R-IL) has been admirably active (H.R. 2745, this [109th] Congress, June 8, 2005).
This most recent absurdity is the newly established UN Human Rights Council. It rather defies the imagination to visualize how any UN entity designed to promote human rights could do so when UN membership, and disproportionately UN leadership, consists of nations and politicians from nations which are the human-rights culprits. United States Ambassador John Bolton, with considerable (but insufficient) support from UN member nations, proposed a set of reforms that arguably would have breathed some morality and effectiveness into this new Council. Not surprisingly, the UN member majority rejected these efforts.
There now appears to be an effort to induce the Bush Administration to provide money for this new UN Council, possibly to seek a United States seat (only to be outvoted, as would happen if the inmates ran a prison). Senator Frist, optimistically and altruistically, if perhaps naively, urges President George W. Bush “to consider organizing a council of democracies outside the [UN] system that could meet regularly to monitor, examine, and expose human rights abuses around the globe. . .”
There mere fact that the UN Council is stacked with perpetrators of human-rights violations reflects a sad and pervasive reality: The UN is influenced, and in many instances dominated, by a vast and expensive bureaucracy which largely derives from, and is beholden to, often undemocratic and/or corrupt countries the leadership of which exercises varying degrees of animosity toward the United States (although often benefiting from American taxpayer dollars).
This little paper is not the forum for detailed statistical enumeration. The following figures could be off but they are close enough to paint the picture. United States annual UN dues apparently run about $440 million; American taxpayers pay for 22% or so of UN cost; the United States, as well as about two-thirds of the 191 member states, owe money (based upon assessments) to the UN; so forth.
Few member states want to address key questions, as, for example, how has the UN: (1) Reduced human suffering? (2) Prevented terrorism? (3) Promoted religious freedom? (4) Facilitated international trade? (4) And, if one thinks it a realistic goal, promoted democracy? Of course, scholars and occasional empiricists address these questions, but the real-world results are sparse.
If the UN cannot be reformed adequately, some day our political leaders, risking heated denunciation, may be required to address an underlying question: What has the UN accomplished and what might it accomplish: (1) Which is essential or of very high American priority? (2) Which is beneficial to the United States? (3) Which the United States could not have done alone or with appropriate allies for the particular cause? (4) Which the UN successfully accomplished?
Plaudits to Senator Frist, a brilliant and imaginative leader, but let’s not elevate our hope for significant success.
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.
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