On March 3, 2014 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed the opening of the 25th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
As expected he was full of praise for the UN's top rights body: "The Human Rights Council is mandated to advance human rights every day and everywhere...The HRC is helping the world become more vigilant in tracking the earliest signs of crisis...your work for accountability and an end to impunity are critical."
Accountability?
The UN Secretary-General was at pains not to name or single out Syrian President Assad for responsibility for the suffering of his people. Instead, on the bloodbath in Syria he pointed to "all parties" as violating human rights.
And the Secretary-General said, for instance,: "I welcome the High Commissioner's report on promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka." Actually, this is how the UN Human Rights Council has been promoting accountability in Sri Lanka. In 2009 more than 100,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka by the government forces during the conflict with the Tamils. In May 2009 the UN "Human Rights" Council adopted a resolution praising the Sri Lanka government for respecting human rights during the conflict. Five years after the massacres there has been no credible investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the government forces.
Ban Ki-moon saved his last words for the UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay who is finishing her term in August: "Pillay has been a fearless defender of the most vulnerable ...on the frontline of crisis...an eloquent voice against racism, xenophobia and intolerance." In fact, a look back at the record of Navi Pillay paints a very different picture. She spent a major part of her tenure as the UN High Commissioner singling out and promoting intolerance against the Jewish state. Among other things, she called for the creation of the notorious Goldstone inquiry. After Goldstone claimed that Israel had intentionally targeted civilians, the High Commissioner expressed "full support to Justice Goldstone's report and its recommendations" and though Goldstone himself retracted this libel, Pillay did not.
The UN's top human rights body will adopt no resolution condemning Russian aggression in the Ukraine despite it being a direct attack on democratic rights, and do nothing to stop horrors around the world - because its own members include some of the world's worst human rights violators - like Russia, China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia. Instead, the Council is scheduled to adopt 5 times as many resolutions condemning Israel than North Korea.
Yes, "the Human Rights Council is mandated to advance human rights every day and everywhere." But it's a mandate that it has not, and will not, fulfill.