UN Commission on Human Rights
During its annual five-week session in Geneva, the UNCHR regularly adopts 5 to 8 anti-Israel resolutions, and more than 30 percent of its meeting time is devoted to one-sided discussions of Israeli policy. Largely as a result of campaigning by NGOs that enjoy consultative privileges at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), such as the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), the commission ignores or gives inadequate attention to the world's most significant human rights abuses, largely for political reasons (this year the UNCHR has a Libyan chair while Israel is barred from membership). PCHR alone submitted six written interventions condemning Israel while rejecting counter-resolutions condemning Palestinian atrocities and use of terror attacks. As an organization, PCHR essentially serves the interests of the Palestinian Authority. While its mission statement promises criticism of all factors affecting Palestinians' human rights, its long reports make scant mention of the high levels of corruption in the Palestinian Authority including the embezzlement of many hundreds of millions of dollars of donor money. Yet, PCHR is funded by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), that itself receives 80 percent of its funding directly from the European Union. This grants it the authority of a human rights organization, despite its politicized work.
The UN has rules for granting ECOSOC accreditation to NGOs, but actual accreditation rests more on politics than commitment to human rights. China blocked the application of the NGO Human Rights in China, and the Arab and Islamic bloc sought to prevent the Jewish humanitarian NGO Hadassah from receiving accreditation.
|
|
|
