Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-15-Speech-3-323"
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the issue that we are discussing now, at this relatively late hour, is also a great personal concern of mine, which is why it was important to me to remain here for this debate. I am pleased to have the opportunity to join you for this debate.
Thirdly, there will be a regular human rights review of all countries through the creation of a universal review mechanism, which will also help obviate accusations of double standards and selectivity in future.
Fourthly, the Human Rights Council has the competence to make direct recommendations to all the bodies of the United Nations, including the UN Security Council. We believe that this has the potential to substantially strengthen the United Nations human rights protection system as a whole.
The fifth point is that, ultimately, the important achievements of the Commission on Human Rights remain, namely the system of special rapporteurs and the active participation of non-governmental organisations in sessions.
Although it was not possible to achieve everything, this new Human Rights Council represents a clear improvement on the Commission on Human Rights, which was no longer effective. The Commission on Human Rights will now meet again – presumably briefly – to conclude its business and subsequently hand it over to the Human Rights Council. In May of this year – soon, in other words – the first members of the Human Rights Council are due to be elected, and the inaugural session of the Council is due to be held as soon as this June. We – as the EU and the Council – shall do our utmost to ensure that the Human Rights Council is able to carry out its work successfully and effectively from the outset.
Although the United States did not endorse this proposal, I nevertheless believe that a certain amount of trust was established in recent days and weeks, particularly in transatlantic relations between the EU and the US, since the US stated, on the occasion of the establishment of the Human Rights Council, that it was not its intention to hinder the establishment and financing of this Council, and that it agreed with the objectives of this Council in principle, but that the two problems I have mentioned – the issues of the election of members and of the exclusion of members – were too serious to enable it to vote in favour.
I hope that the work of the Human Rights Council in the coming years will convince all parties that this was a good choice, that this represents progress, and that, ultimately, we have also done something positive for the protection of human rights around the world. I believe that we, as the European Union, can be proud to have made a contribution to this.
As you know, a summit on the reform of the United Nations was held last year in New York and, naturally, the participants – Heads of State or Government – were asked whether or not they considered the meeting to be a success. The President of the Republic of Austria stated that he did indeed consider the meeting a success. Of course – as is always the case in a multilateral environment – there were some things that were pushed through and others that were not, but, in the final reckoning, last year’s United Nations Summit in New York could be described as a success. It was a success in that agreement was reached, in essence, on a number of things that were very important particularly to us as Member States of the EU, to the West as a whole. We all stand up for human rights and fundamental freedoms. The decision of principle taken last September in New York to establish a Human Rights Council in place of the Commission on Human Rights was one decision that justified a positive assessment of the Summit.
Of course, last September’s decision was only a decision of principle, and it took difficult negotiations to breathe life into this Human Rights Council. I believe that special thanks are due at this juncture to the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations, Mr Jan Eliasson, for tirelessly working to enable a decision on the Human Rights Council to be reached a few hours ago in New York. The results of the vote adopting this Human Rights Council are impressive: 170 votes in favour and 4 against, with 3 countries abstaining. The countries that voted against were the US, Israel, Palau and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Venezuela, Iran und Belarus abstained.
Ladies and gentlemen, 170 votes in the United Nations is a great success. The EU put up a united front at the United Nations General Assembly with a common position. This is something of which we can be proud, and we can congratulate ourselves and the international community on this success.
The establishment of the Human Rights Council represents an important, I would even say historic, step towards further strengthening the United Nations human rights system and the protection of human rights around the world.
Naturally, there were a number of issues on which even the EU was disappointed. We should have liked to see a different outcome on one issue or another, but, after all, compromises are necessary in a multilateral framework, and we need to ask ourselves whether what proved possible in the end is, in essence, still consistent with what we actually wanted. As regards the Human Rights Council in its current form, the answer was a clear ‘yes’. I am very much obliged to all those who were involved in bringing about this decision. I am pleased that the Council succeeded in gaining the support of all the Member States for this.
I do not wish at this point to concentrate so much on the things that did not succeed, but on a number of – I believe – particularly positive aspects of the new system of the Human Rights Council.
Firstly, unlike the Commission on Human Rights, which operated under the aegis of the Ecosoc, which met once a year in Geneva for a six-week session, the Human Rights Council will meet throughout the year, and will be directly responsible to the General Assembly. The option of the Human Rights Council possibly one day becoming one of the main bodies of the United Nations has been left open. This would of course require changing the Charter of the United Nations, and we all know how difficult that would be, but the option is open. At all events, however, it is now a permanent body of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
The direct and individual election of members subject to the requirement of an absolute majority of all Member States of the United Nations also represents progress. All of those who, like myself, have taken part time and again in recent years will be pleased that this will hopefully now mean, if not an end to, then at least a substantial reduction in the – often undignified – process of horse-trading over votes: who is voting for whom, when to vote on this matter, whether to vote for another in return. Another new aspect is the possibility of suspending members of the Human Rights Council in the case of gross and systematic human rights violations subject to a two-thirds majority. Incidentally, this was ultimately the decisive reason why the United States withheld support for the Human Rights Council. The US attempted until the very end to push through the requirement of a two-thirds majority for membership, and also the automatic exclusion of members on whom the Security Council has imposed sanctions. The EU offered to issue – and has indeed issued – a declaration in the General Assembly on the occasion of the establishment of the Human Rights Council making a political commitment to refrain from voting in favour of admitting to the Human Rights Council any country which has been accused by the Security Council of human rights violations and which is subject to Security Council sanctions. Here, too, the EU has sent out an important political signal."@en1
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