Conclusion of the UN Human Rights Council’s Fifth Session and First Year

Statement by Sean McCormack,
U.S. Department of State Spokesman
Washington, D.C.
June 19, 2007

 

The United States is disappointed by the Human Rights Council’s first year and by the seriously flawed “institution building” package announced today.

The Council focused almost exclusively on a single country -- Israel -- failing to address serious human rights violations in other countries such as Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Belarus, and Cuba.

Unfortunately, today the President of the Council announced a new rules package making these problems even worse, by terminating the mandates of the UN Rapporteurs on the Governments of Cuba and Belarus, two of the world’s most active perpetrators of serious human rights violations, and singling out Israel as the only country subject to a permanent agenda item.

We are concerned about the procedural irregularities employed last night denying Council members the opportunity to vote on this agenda.  The Human Rights Council was intended to be the world’s leading human rights protection mechanism.  Its proceedings should be a model of fairness and transparency.  Instead, in the interest of political expediency, procedural irregularities denied members the right to an up or down vote on principled human rights concerns -- a right guaranteed by the rules of the institution.

 

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