The United Nations Human Rights Council voted earlier this week to halt independent investigations of Belarus and Cuba, while continuing to monitor Israel.  Those decisions have drawn criticism from many Western countries and from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The European Union, Canada and the United States had already attacked the singling-out of Israel's role in the Palestinian territories for continued special investigation, under the deal reached in Geneva on Monday.
 
A UN statement said, "The Secretary-General is disappointed at the council's decision to single out only one specific regional item given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world."

The statement did not actually name Israel, but apparently that’s the “specific regional item” he was talking about.

The package of measures was presented as a “compromise” agreement, even though Canada spoke against the package and withheld consent.  Canada’s explicit objections notwithstanding, the HRC declared that the package was adopted by consensus.  UN Watch has the story.

For possibly the first time in the history of the United Nations, one of its major bodies has ruled that a consensus vote was achieved even though one of its members—one with a particular reputation for honesty—insists it never gave consent, much less even saw the text that was voted upon.  In its most aggressive Orwellian move to date, the UN Human Rights Council declared that this week’s package of new procedures was adopted by consensus, on the night of June 18.  (In fact, the rushed declaration of council president Luis Alfonso de Alba was made past the legal midnight deadline, already in the early moments of June 19, but that’s another story.)  Canada’s challenge to this interpretation was then overruled by the Council, 46 members to 1, the lone vote being Canada’s.

Read the whole thing for the text of Canada’s point of order opposing the consensus declaration.

Sounds like the HRC’s shady manoeuvres stirred up a real hornet’s nest.  What a fine way to end its first year of operations.

Never mind all that. At least one country thought the HRC’s little package was just fine.

Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrey Papou said in a statement on June 20 that the UN Human Rights Council's decision on June 18 to eliminate the position of its rapporteur on human-rights observance in Belarus shows the council's ability to be guided "by the principles of a constructive international dialogue and cooperation in the human-rights sphere," Belapan reported.

I guess that’s “cooperation” of a sort.  I’ll ignore your human rights abuses if you’ll ignore mine—but for Israel, we’ll make an exception.

h/t: Judeoscope

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