As Venezuelans die on the streets, U.N. Human Rights Council remains mum

As Venezuelans die on the streets, U.N. Human Rights Council remains mum
By Andrés Oppenheimer
aoppenheimer@miamiherald.com

What a travesty. Despite Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's bloody
repression of opposition protests that has resulted in more than 100
dead, thousands of wounded and hundreds of political prisoners over the
past three months, the United Nations Human Rights Council, UNHRC, has
not uttered a single word about Venezuela's human rights crisis.

The Geneva-based UNHRC, whose job is to "uphold the highest standards"
of human rights across the world, has not issued one single resolution
about Venezuela, nor convened any urgent session to discuss the crisis
there, nor called for any inquiry into the deaths of protesters by armed
government-backed mobs.

There is a reason for that inaction, of course. About half of the
council's 47 member countries are dictatorships — including Cuba, China,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela — who defend one another against
charges of human-rights violations. In fact, the UNHRC is a mutual
protection society for the world's worst dictatorships.

"The council is entitled to call an emergency session on Venezuela any
day, and given what is happening on the streets there, they should have
done that," says Hillel Neuer, head of U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based
advocacy group. "But they have never called for an emergency session on
Venezuela.

"They should have created a commission of inquiry on what is happening
there, and they have not done that either. On the contrary, Venezuela
was recently re-elected to the council."

Neither the United States nor other democracies represented at the
council presented any motions to the council condemning Venezuela's
human rights abuses.

The Trump administration, aside from a few photo shots of President
Donald Trump with Venezuelan opposition figures and some targeted visa
sanctions against Venezuelan officials that had been started by the
Obama administration, has been largely invisible in the Venezuelan crisis.

Trump has not yet appointed a U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva,
which is one of the reasons why there was no high-level pressure on the
council to debate the Venezuelan case, critics say. Nikki Haley, the
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in New York, made a brief visit to
Geneva during the UNHRC sessions in June, but only held a side-event on
Venezuela outside the council's session.

The Trump administration's diplomatic inexperience and ineptitude were
also evident at the Organization of American States' June special
meeting of foreign ministers on Venezuela. The absence of U.S. Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson at that meeting helped make it possible for a
handful of tiny Caribbean islands to effectively defeat a condemnation
of Venezuela's regime by 20 countries in the region.

The Trump administration has said it is considering pulling out of the
UNHRC unless the council reforms itself. Haley has rightly noted that
the council's seats should be awarded through competitive voting to keep
the worst human-rights violators out of it.

As it is now, council members are appointed by their regional blocs.
That allows countries that desperately want to be in the council — such
as Cuba and Venezuela — to trade favors with their neighbors in exchange
for their appointments to the UNHRC.

But most independent human-rights groups say it would be unwise for the
Trump administration to pull out from the UNHRC. They say the council
was even worse before the Obama administration decided to join it in 2009.

Asked whether the United States should resign from the council, Neuer
told me, "It's a dilemma. But when George W. Bush decided to pull out,
the council did not get better. It got worse. The United States should
appoint a human-rights hero as ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva. Send
someone who will fight."

My opinion: I agree, although I doubt that the Trump administration will
have any credibility as a leader on human-rights issues. Trump has
already embraced the dictators of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey
and several other countries, breaking a long-standing tradition by
Republican and Democratic presidents to speak out against human-rights
abuses everywhere.

The best course of action would be for all democracies, including the
United States, to start raising their voices and denouncing the UNHRC
for what it is — a monumental joke.

Watch the "Oppenheimer Presenta" TV show Sundays at 9 p.m. on CNN en
Español. Twitter: @oppenheimera

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