Human rights at the U.N.

Let it be noted that in the fourth year of the 21st century, the secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, announced creation of a new post of special adviser on the prevention of genocide.

This adviser’s mandate will refer not only to genocide but also to mass murder and other large-scale human-rights violations, such as ethnic cleansing.

Mr. Annan made his announcement at a special meeting of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), called to observe the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. What is rather nauseating is that the commission’s membership, according to a Freedom House analysis, includes five of the world’s 15 most repressive nations — China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

Eight other UNCHR member states are rated by Freedom House as “not free.” With such a membership (the U.S. and Norway were voted off the commission in a secret ballot) you have a situation, ignored by the U.N. secretary general, in which the bloody-handed violators of human rights sit in judgment over their crimes against humanity.

Now let us be clear. Human rights exist and are observed only in democratic states and nowhere else. We have known this for a half-century despite the promulgation of the 1948 Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the creation of a field of genocide studies and its anti-genocide publications, the special attention of many foreign ministries of democracies to genocide, creation of numerous human rights and genocide nongovernmental organizations and the International Court of Justice.

In a critical analysis of Kofi Annan’s speech, Professor Rudolph J. Rummel, a leading student of genocide, has written:

“What Annan and others miss is the fundamental cause, a cause that unless recognized and acted upon will defeat attempts to prevent genocide as well as attempts on the part of some U.N. members to deal with incipient or occurring genocide. And that is the lack of democratic freedom. It is dictatorships that murder their own people. All cases of modern domestic genocide have been by dictatorships. While dictatorships of one species or another, the worst being totalitarian ones, continue to exist, there will be genocide. No modern, or what may be called liberal democracies, have committed domestic democide. There is an undeniable correlation here. The more democratic freedom a people enjoy, the less likely their own government will murder them.”

Emeritus Professor Rummel at the University of Hawaii, has been compiling statistics of mass murder and genocide by 20th-century governments against their own peoples. His research has led him to this terrifying conclusion:

Twentieth-century dictatorships have killed more of their own people — 3 times as many — as have been killed in all civil and international wars put together. In other words, says Mr. Rummel, “Governments have killed more people in cold blood than in the heat of battle.”

And as for the United Nations, says Mr. Rummel, “[it] cannot even at this moment call genocide what is genocide. For example, while Israeli civilians are murdered by genocide bombers, the politics within the U.N. on this issue, guided and led by many of those aiding and supporting the genocide bombers and terrorist organizations, tries to sanction Israel, the victim trying to protect itself, and not the perpetrators.”

The U.N. today has a new high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, a distinguished Canadian jurist and former member of the Canadian Supreme Court. She was chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Previous holders of this position have accomplished little. Perhaps Madame Arbour will be able to enforce the dozens and dozens of proclamations about human rights which have been shelved for decades. Madame Arbour can be reached at:

OHCHR-UNOG 8-14 Avenue de la Paix

1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Telephone Number (41-22) 917-9000

Drop her a line.

Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for The Washington Times.