Elle ne regrette rien?

Mme Arbour is, thank goodness, gone; a Canadian lawyer comments:

On June 30 Louise Arbour's four-year term as UN high commissioner for human rights ended. There had been high hopes for the former Canadian Supreme Court justice's tenure, given what a vocal champion she was for human rights in her own country. But upon her return to Canada, Ms. Arbour received only lukewarm recognition from our government and the legal profession.

This absence of praise has become the subject of discussion within the legal community. Some have argued that we should have showered her with accolades. It has also been suggested that her vocal criticism of Israel caused her to be wrongly labelled as an anti-Semite, thereby guaranteeing a pariah status.

I believe Ms. Arbour has received exactly the recognition that she deserves: not much.

Ms. Arbour should have been under no illusions about the challenges she faced. She took the job knowing that many of the constituent countries of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) had no recognizable concept of human rights within their own jurisdictions.

Yet, from the record compiled by the UNHRC under Ms. Arbour's direction, you'd think there was only one major human rights violator in the entire world: Israel. In 2006, over 46% of the council's resolutions were directed at, and critical of, the Jewish state.

[...]

Under Ms. Arbour's watch, UNHRC members China, Libya, Iran and Cuba systematically blocked almost all critical scrutiny of any state behaviour but Israel's. In the face of this duplicity, did she speak out? Did she use her platform to try to break this pattern? Did she threaten to quit unless a reasonably level playing field was introduced? She did not...

Mark C.

Posted by markc at October 30, 2008 06:25 PM