A Positive Voice for Atheism
Fourth Quarter: 2015
Saudi Arabia and the UN Human Rights Council STUART BECHMAN
Most secularists know Saudi Arabia as one of the most oppressive religious regimes in the world, the source and support for an extreme version of Sunni Islam called “Wahabbism” that infested the world with Osama bin Laden and ISIS. Not only do women have essentially zero rights in the state, but their system of justice is based on a strict interpretation of Sharia law, which requires that the (royal family's version of) Islam be promoted and protected at all
costs. Religious diversity – let alone criticism - is not tolerated, and the sentences for such “crimes” are extreme. Apostasy and atheism are two “crimes” punishable by death under Saudi law. Amnesty International ranks Saudi Arabia among the world's top three executioners as of 2014. Saudi Arabia has beheaded far more people in the past year (over 100 in 2015 so far) than ISIS, despite the press coverage of the latter. So one might fairly ask, how did Saudi Arabia come to sit on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC)? The UNHRC itself has a colourful if brief history. Up until 2006, human rights were tracked and advocated at the UN by a body called the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), established by the original UN Charter of 1947. Its members were selected by the members of the UN Economic and Social Council (UNESOC), itself a Charter committee of the UN. Over the years, criticism was levelled at the UNCHR for being selective in its focus of human rights violations and for allowing the appointment of member states who themselves were accused of human rights violations, thus undermining its credibility. Many states who
Left: Faisal Trad, Saudi Arabia's ambassador in Geneva, has been elected Chair of the UN Human Rights Council panel that appoints independent experts. Right: Michael Møller, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva. Fourth Quarter : 2015 |
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sought to serve on the UNCHR were believed to be doing so specifically in order to escape scrutiny of its own human rights records. So in 2006, the UN General Assembly voted to replace the UNCHR with a new Human Rights Council whose members would be elected on a rotating basis by the full General Assembly in hopes of strengthening the legitimacy and independence of the body. The General Assembly also reserved the right to remove any member state from the UNHRC by a two-thirds vote of the Assembly if the case was made that the member state was itself persistently committing gross and systematic violations of human rights during its term of membership. Unfortunately, the 2006 restructuring seemed to do little to restore the human rights credibility of the UN or its enforcement body. Since the restructuring, member states with abysmal human rights records such as Iran, Cuba, Russia, China, Sudan, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and of course, Saudi Arabia, have all been appointed to the Council; and to-date, the General Assembly has not seen fit to remove any member state from the body. The Council's record in defending human rights has also not appreciably improved: With a plurality of member states being Muslim, the majority of the Council's proclamations have been to condemn Israel, the Middle East's only true democracy, 61 times, more than all other condemnations of all other nations it has issued since its inception. In 2014, the HRC issued a proclamation against Norway, of all countries, of trampling on the rights of Norwegian Muslims by allowing criticism of Islam and threats against Muslims to go unchallenged and unpunished. So those who know the history of the UNHRC were not at all surprised to see Saudi Arabia appointed by the UN General Assembly in 2013 for a three-year term. In Saudi Arabia's campaign for its election to the UNHRC in November 2013, it included in its pre-election submission the following pledge: “Should Saudi Arabia be selected as a member for the period 2014-2016, it pledges to continue to support tirelessly the work of the Human Rights Council. It will continue to adhere to Human Rights Council resolutions, cooperate with its mechanisms and actively participate in its work during its regular and special sessions and in the session of the Social Forum.” Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia's human rights record since its election to the HRC has remained as abysmal as it has been prior to its election. In 2014, Saudi Arabia sentenced secularist blogger Raif Badawi to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam”. The crippling of the first 50 lashes was so severe that he had to be hospitalized; the international outcry over his case was so intense that the Saudi government has Fourth Quarter : 2015 |
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