UN rights review still gives activists hope

Feb 13, 2009, 14:37 GMT

Geneva - Having concluded on Friday the fourth session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), the United Nations said that 64 countries have had their rights record publicly scrutinized.

'We are one third of the way to reviewing all of the 192 UN members states,' Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi, the president of Human Rights Council told reporters.

The session saw 16 states reviewed, including so-called 'heavyweights' such as China, Russia, Mexico and Germany.

The UPR sessions first convened in 2007, and each country was set to be checked once every four years.

The goal was 'to improve human rights in every country and address human rights violations wherever they occur. It is a chance to shed light on the darkest corners of the globe,' said Uhomoibhi, who ends his one-year term in the summer.

For advocates like Juliette de Rivero from Human Rights Watch (HRW), the UPR process provides platform they lacked in the past.

'We were fighting for many years to have a discussion on human rights in China. The UPR did not reach its full potential, but it got pretty close to that,' de Rivero said.

Having a debate on Cuba and China might have been rare, but it was also unheard of, prior to the UPR, to have a three hour debate on countries with little political sway like Djibouti or Zambia.

While the group UN Watch, which is critical of the international organization in general, called the UPR a 'mutual praise society,' rights advocates and the president of the HRC differed.

'My answer is do you prefer UPR or nothing,' Uhomoibhi said, 'because no other system like this exists, to actually hold states accountable.'

The criticism came as Sudan praised China's rights record and Sri Lanka did the same for Cuba, even as activists warned that prisons in the countries held journalists and rights defenders. Iran criticized Germany for its treatment of women, while Saudi Arabia backed its ban on women driving cars by saying that it was a rule reflecting the will of '80 percent of the people.'

The HRC had no way to impose its views on member states but the debate alone was significant for de Rivero.

'China showed an unwillingness to except criticism. It denied any human rights violations at all,' she noted, adding that this in itself shed light on part of the issue.

Other countries, like Mexico and Germany, appeared to take the process seriously and even Saudi Arabia might end up complying with some of the recommendations made on its women's rights record, observers from those countries said.

'This is a new process. Countries can engage in it in a constructive manner. We the countries have the responsibility to improve on it,' said Uhomoibhi.

What might also give the process a boost would be if the United States would chose to reengage with the HRC. While much of US President Barack Obama's rhetoric on international cooperation pleased ears in Geneva, there was no sign that he would change the policy of his predecessor George W Bush.

Susan Rice, the new US ambassador to the UN, said last month that the administration had not yet reached a decision on whether to seek membership in the HRC.

An official at the US mission in Geneva said the issue was 'still up in the air.'