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HR principles erode at UN (Dawn)

By Marwaan Macan-Markar DAWN, 16 December 2002 

BANGKOK: Asian human rights activists ended a week-long conference here on Friday determined to stall what they call the steady erosion of human rights principles and practices within the UN system.

Most troubling to some of the over 500 participants who attended the Asian Civil Society Forum 2002 here was an assault by governments on the global body's human rights mechanisms and institutions, including the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

"There is a move by certain Asian governments with notorious human rights records to weaken the role of human rights in the UN in the future," said Ngawang Choephel of the International Campaign for Tibet. "The Human Rights Commission is one case, where the governments want to reduce its competence."

What makes this worse, critics say, is the fact that Asian governments have failed to stop what they called "disturbing patterns" amounting to smaller space for activists to challenge governments' reports on their rights records to the United Nations. This, they add, goes against the grain of many UN treaties and international conventions on human rights.

"Almost all Asia-Pacific governments have been inimical to the human rights standards set at the UN," bluntly added Ravi Nair, coordinator of the New Delhi-based Asia-Pacific Human Rights Network.

These countries include China, India, Pakistan and Iran, he says. "They have been very sharp and intelligent in their efforts, by achieving their objectives without doing it openly and being perceived as the bad guys."

At their meeting here, activists from over 33 Asian countries trotted out examples to buttress these arguments, including the cutting down from five to 1.5 minutes of the time given each non-government organisation (NGO) to make verbal interventions at the CHR's sessions.

As disturbing, says Nair, has been erosion of the time allocated for independent human rights experts, called special rapporteurs, to present their reports on a range of themes to the CHR.

The themes include extra judicial or summary executions, freedom of opinion and expression, torture and violence against women. The CHR, which is made up of 53 member states, meets every year from March through April in Geneva.

If governments get their way, say the activists, the CHR could end up like another UN rights body - the Sub-commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, which has 26 human rights experts assigned to study human rights issues and report to the commission.

Currently, according to participants at a special session on the CHR, experts on the sub-commission have been compelled to stop naming countries that have committed human rights abuses.

"This has ended the principle of naming and shaming governments for rights abuse, a principle that made the sub- commission significant to NGOs," said an Indian rights activist during the session.

A South Asian diplomat agrees, saying that NGOs have lost interest in the sub-commission because its powers to honestly voice out human rights violations have been restricted.

"The sub-commission should have good NGO participation and interest for it to be useful," he said. - Dawn/InterPress Guardian News Service.

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