Why Eleanor Roosevelt is rolling over in her grave

Opinion: The UN council on human rights she founded has been hijacked.

Joel BrinkleyApril 7, 2009 17:07Updated May 30, 2010 11:51

Right before our eyes, the Obama administration is queuing up to dive headfirst into a cesspool.

Late last week, it decided to join the United Nations Human Rights Council, whose primary mission of late has been to curtail freedom of speech.

I perfectly understand what the White House and State Department are thinking. President Barack Obama wants to open dialogues with nations that the Bush administration considered bad actors, including Iran, North Korea, maybe even Cuba. So how can Obama pursue a policy like that and refuse to participate in a council dedicated, in theory, to human rights?

Yes, it’s a dilemma. But Arab states and their allies have hijacked the council — along with the human rights conference it is staging in Geneva later this month.

Right now the Arab states and their coalition partners, including Cuba and Pakistan, are pushing the Human Rights Council to adopt a resolution that defines any critical discussion of Islam as a human rights violation worthy of punishment. This, the resolution’s sponsors argue, is to counteract what it calls “Islamaphobia.” Free speech, as Egypt’s council representative puts it, is “political in nature and not grounded in objectivity.”

As it is, at council meetings, representatives from Arab states and their allies bully anyone who attempts to broach subjects they find offensive.

During one recent session, for example, a speaker brought up a particularly egregious human rights problem: genital mutilation of women. Egypt objected mightily, demanding: “We will not discuss issues related to Sharia law; Islam will not be crucified in this forum. This will not happen!" He thundered on, joined by a compatriot from Pakistan, until the chairman had no choice but to close the debate. Not coincidentally, some Egyptian women are subjected to this procedure, even today.

At another council session more recently, Human Rights Council members praised China for executing criminals and imposing Internet censorship. Iran urged China to tighten censorship to prevent further “defamation of religion.”

Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in placing human rights on the United Nation’s agenda more than 60 years ago. Her initiative eventually took form as the Human Rights Commission. But this group grew to be so disreputable — Libya, Cuba and Sudan were among the body’s notable human rights monitors — that by 2004 it had thoroughly embarrassed the U.N. United Nations leaders set out to abolish the commission, saying it “suffers from a credibility deficit that casts doubt on the overall reputation of the United Nations.”