On September 1, she will take up a post that many in the United Nations consider cursed. It evokes many conflicting opinions, criticisms, grievances, and fury because the person who occupies it has to deal with violations of human rights, freedom of speech and assembly, rights of women, seniors, teenagers, children, journalists and incapacitated people - all in the motley company of 191 people.
Not a single commissar for human rights has left the position without angry words, with the possible exception of Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died in an explosion in Baghdad's Canal Hotel in 2003 (aut bene aut nihil). But he was in the job for less than a year. The overwhelming majority of his predecessors and successors left office in a state of gloom.
Former Irish President Mary Robinson left the post in 2002. Although she did not resign (indeed, she extended her full term), she complained that the position allowed her to do practically nothing - everything involving rights was politicized to the utmost. She was particularly critical of the Bush Administration.
Pillay's predecessor, Louise Arbour from Canada, sincerely tried to defend human rights, but her own country was the only one not to thank her for her tireless efforts on this position. Even her resignation was completely ignored. They say that the Canadian government itself insisted that she should not prolong her term for another four years. The story goes that Canada was under pressure from the United States, which did not like Arbour's criticism of Israel's conduct in the occupied territories. She once said that though the death of Israelis from rocket fire was a tragedy, the shooting of Israeli villages with primitive Palestinian weapons was not the same as attacks on Palestinian lands by the Israeli army with tanks. After this statement, the Canadian government made it clear to Arbour that her own country would not support her nomination. A couple of months ago she told the UN Secretary-General that she intended to quit.
Arbour had previously served as Carla Del Ponte's predecessor as chief prosecutor for the Hague Tribunal, where she presented official charges to Slobodan Milosevic and other major Serbian defendants.
Pillay takes up her new position at a time when the entire structure of the UN human rights agency is undergoing reform. Nobody knows what will come of it (maybe not much, considering the past disputes, clashes, and scandals over human rights). In 2006, the UN finally got rid of the Human Rights Commission, which had existed since 1946, and replaced it with the UN Human Rights Council. The commission's 60th anniversary was so miserable and shallow that Amnesty International criticized UN members for giving it such a chilly farewell. After all, the commission did make at least some contribution to the cause of human rights.
The commission's reorganization was long overdue. It was hard to understand how it could defend human rights with such members. I do not even want to mention them. The new Human Rights Council will include 47 countries instead of the commission's 53. The UN General Assembly will elect the council's members by a simple majority vote. Before, the commission was elected by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which always pushed it in the wrong direction and eventually doomed it by choosing Libya as its chairman in 2003.
In this regard the new council is not very lucky, either. The United States, the U.S. administered Marshal Islands and Palau, and Israel all voted against its formation. Washington is still boycotting the new agency, and without its involvement it will not be that effective. Publicly the United States objects that there is no guarantee that the council will not admit nations which regularly violate human rights. In fact, it does not want to adopt commitments to a body that would inevitably criticize it for torture and illegal detention of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and the CIA's secret prisons for "special rendition", as well as fight against terrorism without respect for human rights all over the world.
Russia has become a member of the council. Some 137 of the 191 UN member states voted for it. Azerbaijan and Ukraine have also been admitted, while other post-Soviet republics - Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, and Lithuania were not elected, despite their ardent desire to join the council. Moscow has already said that it will use its membership of the council to raise the issues of violations of the human rights of the Russian-speaking population in Latvia and Estonia, glorification of Nazism, and harassment of war veterans. However, it will continue to strongly oppose any debates on human rights in Chechnya. Although the human rights situation in Chechnya is satisfactory, it should be noted that almost all UN members have this in common - they are ready to discuss human rights violations everywhere but not at home.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is the Council's executive body.
Even before Pillay's official appointment, quite a few skeptics were arguing that her service record is not befitting of this position. First, her entire career has been in criminal law, not human rights. Initially, she was a judge, and later on chaired the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR); in 2003 she was a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Crimes are very different from human rights. Perhaps more importantly, even in her work as a criminal lawyer Pillay has never been seen as an enthusiastic champion of human rights. As Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said, let us see "how Pillay will stand up to big powers when they violate human rights."
She faces a very difficult task, even with a budget of $150 million a year.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
