The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

This past week has seen some excellent news for the United Nations (UN) and some worrisome developments that threaten the credibility of the organization.

The good news was that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the World Food Program (WFP), a specialized agency of the UN tasked with bringing food aid to those who need it. In many countries, this food aid is a necessity either due to structural deficiencies or as a result of natural or man-made disasters.

While the UN is often criticized for its shortcomings, awarding this major prize to the WFP is an important recognition of the excellent work that this, and also other, UN specialized agencies perform on a daily basis. While the WFP rarely sees media coverage, tens of millions of people around the world would likely starve without it.

Specialized agencies such as WFP are, on the whole, technical organizations with trained specialists in procurement and logistics, who perform efficiently and, when possible, with minimum political interference.

I congratulate the WFP, and all those who work selflessly for United Nations specialized agencies and the civil society groups that support them. This award merits celebrating by all.

On flip side, the bad news was the election of member states to the United Nations Human Rights Council. 

China, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela were elected once again to the Council.

These countries are not exactly paragons of respect for human rights given their large scale of qualified and quantified abuses and, in some cases, support for genocidal practices.

When I served as Deputy Spokesperson to the UN Secretary-General, one question always on the minds of audiences was how the UN could propose to enjoy credibility when its political bodies were crammed with human rights violators. 

My response always was that, unlike specialized agencies, UN political bodies are comprised of nation states representatives elected from the 193 member states. They are elected by regions, and regional member states elect those countries that will represent them on the Council.

Although the United Nations aspires to lofty ideals, and member states have signed onto inspirational documents, the sad truth is that member states work for their own best interests rather than for the overall good. And human rights violators protect each other in the hope of maintaining their power and influence.

Thus, Presidents Putin, Xi, and Diaz-Canel, and Maduro will always cover each other’s’ backs and ensure that they are not only not censured, but that focus is placed on countries with far better human rights records that are in the minority on the Council. 

Indeed, Israel is censured far more often than egregious human rights abusers. While the treatment of Palestinians in Israel leaves much to be desired, Israel’s record is far from the terrible reality present in many more states represented on the Council.

While no nation is perfect, the choice of these countries to staff the Human Rights Council at a time when billions are clamoring for their rights to live free from oppression is tragic.

In 2018 the United States withdrew from the Council, calling it, in then UN Ambassador Nikki Haley’s words, a "hypocritical and self-serving organization".

Undiplomatic language, but is it not time to call things out as they are? 

Are you better off trying to change the system from within, or are you better off abandoning a flawed institution?

That is the conundrum facing countries that want to improve the world’s human rights situation, and one that will continue to haunt us as people continue to be jailed, tortured, and killed simply because they displease the leader of their country.

Are those countries who speak of working to change the system from within the UN satisfied with their lack of progress in this regard? 

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Edición: Ana Ordaz