Israel cut working relations with the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday and will bar a U.N. team from entering Israel or the West Bank for a planned investigation of Jewish settlements, the Foreign Ministry said.
Israel accuses the council of having a pronounced anti-Israel bias because of what it says is its disproportionate focus on Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.
Israeli leaders have been in an uproar over the council’s adoption of a resolution last week condemning Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and its decision to send a fact-finding mission to investigate.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced Israel was severing working ties with the council.
Lucius Fox
Chief Executive Officer of Wayne Enterprises
For many, “gay rights” is associated with the debate over whether gay people should be allowed to marry, adopt children or serve openly in the military. But a discussion looming before the United Nations this week is far more basic: whether gays should enjoy the basic right to life.
On Wednesday the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva is to discuss the recommendations of a November report surveying the discrimination and abuse — often state-sponsored — that gay people endure around the world. The findings are chilling: Some 680 transgender people were murdered in 50 countries between 2008 and 2011; 76 countries classify homosexuality as a crime, and at least five of those apply the death penalty. Even those who disapprove of homosexuality on religious grounds are unlikely to object to the report’s anodyne recommendations: that governments should decriminalize homosexuality, work to prevent violence against gays and recognize sexual orientation as a valid cause for asylum.
Developing: The UN Political Affairs chief says Syria’s civilian death toll due to government crackdown is “well over 7,500.”
Photo: Overview of the U.N. Human Rights Council during the emergency debate on human rights and humanitarian situation in Syria, at the United Nations in Geneva February 28, 2012. [REUTERS/Denis Balibouse]
Live blog: The Conflict in Syria
![reuters:
Developing: The UN Political Affairs chief says Syria’s civilian death toll due to government crackdown is “well over 7,500.”
Photo: Overview of the U.N. Human Rights Council during the emergency debate on human rights and humanitarian situation in Syria, at the United Nations in Geneva February 28, 2012. [REUTERS/Denis Balibouse]
Live blog: The Conflict in Syria](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m040xrXzIB1qmaoalo1_500.jpg)
This analysis of Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) describes the implications of the report as well as its reception among state governments, political alliances, and international NGOs. ICG’s critique and recommendations for the report follow:
The Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) criticised the report for failing to provide a “thorough and independent investigation of alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law that the U.N. and other partners of Sri Lanka have been asking for” during Eelam War IV. It wants the international community – through the U.N. Human Rights Council – “to establish an independent international investigation in 2012”. Without such an investigation, accountability for the crimes committed at the end of the civil war was highly unlikely, it said.
The ICG also said the international community should bring pressure on Sri Lanka since there was “little chance” that the recommendations would be acted upon if there was no prodding from outside. It called upon the U.N. Secretary-General, the Human Rights Council and influential countries such as China, India, Japan, the United States, Canada, Britain and France, and also the European Union, to push Sri Lanka on the path of genuine reconciliation. “Sri Lanka’s friends in the Non-Aligned Movement, especially South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico, have a particularly important role in reminding Sri Lanka of the importance of accountability and demilitarisation to lasting peace and reconciliation,” it said.
It also wants a formal discussion of the LLRC report and the U.N. Secretary-General’s panel report at the March 2012 session of the U.N. Human Rights Council. This should lead to an independent international mechanism to investigate all credible allegations and to monitor domestic efforts at accountability, it pointed out.
“The Human Rights Council should also take note of the LLRC’s recommendations that the government investigate and hold to account those responsible for abductions, disappearances and attacks on journalists – including those committed by armed pro-government Tamil parties. These issues should be addressed on an urgent basis by the Sri Lankan government and its implementation of the commission’s recommendations should be monitored on an ongoing basis by the HRC,” the ICG said.
