Africa must stand up and be counted over United Nations’ human rights issues

Negotiations in New York on how members of a new Council will be chosen are nearing a critical point, and there's a real risk of failure if governments – and Africa’s states in particular - don't stand up to be counted.

The UN has long had a rights watchdog, the Commission on Human Rights. But its repeated failure to condemn blatant abuse, and a membership roster that sometimes looked like a dictators' club gave the Commission a bad name. Some of the worst rights abusers cynically sought seats on the Commission in order to be in a position to block complaints about the repression they were visiting on their citizens. Prime African culprits such as Zimbabwe, Sudan, Eritrea and Swaziland were members in 2005. Libya even chaired the CHR in 2000.

So in his ‘In Larger Freedom’ report last year, UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, called for a strengthening of international human rights machinery and suggested that the Commission should be replaced by a smaller Human Rights Council whose membership should include only states with good human rights records, elected by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly (GA).

Since October 2005, negotiations have been going on in New York between regional blocs at the UN secretariat, including the African Group. But old habits die hard. The same countries that got the old Commission a bad name have been in the thick of the horse-trading, making it difficult for moderate countries to support a forward- looking agenda without clashing with habitual abusers. All the same, just a few weeks left before the final resolution must be agreed, much progress has been made. Although African nations had serious difficulties with some aspects of the draft text and there were some hard fought debates, compromises have been found.

1. All now agree that the new Council will meet regularly throughout the year, allowing for increased dialogue and engagement with member states, and for rights violations to be tackled before they result in condemnation of individual governments or measures that challenge national sovereignty.

2. The new Council will be expected to promote and protect all human rights - civil, political, social and cultural - and importantly for Africa, the right to development.

3. Whereas in the past, the Commission was sometimes accused of "naming and shaming" for political reasons, the new Council will use a broader range of interventions, including human rights education, advisory services, technical assistance and capacity building, to achieve improvement.

4. The HRC will also undertake a universal periodic peer review of all member states, based on objective and reliable information, and the full involvement of the country concerned, a provision that African states felt was critical to their support.

Make or break

In fact, with the US proposal to exclude candidate countries that are under Security Council sanctions now rejected, the only "bracketed" (i.e. controversial) issue in the draft resolution is the percentage of votes a country needs from the General Assembly to be elected to the new HRC. In fact, everything hinges on this "make or break" point. Earlier in the negotiation, there were attempts to agree that each region would have to put up a slate of countries for election comprising more candidates than the seats available. This would have given the GA a real choice.

Under the compromise reached, however, each regional grouping will put up exactly the number of countries for which it has seats. Thus out of a total of 45 seats on the HRC, 12 will be granted to African countries and the Africa Group will put up 12 names for election. Each country will be voted on separately, however, allowing the GA to reject countries if it is felt that their record disqualifies them to be HRC members. Human Rights advocates fear, however, that if only a simple majority of votes in the GA is required, the effect might be that all 12 countries are elected, no matter what their human rights record might be. That could leave the new Council with the same problem that the old Commission had – notorious abusers having seats on the Council.

If, however, a two-thirds majority in the GA is required, the challenge of getting elected will be that much harder. Even if a Zimbabwe or a Sudan is able to embarrass other African states into supporting its candidacy, many non-African countries will be needed to secure the two-thirds majority and they may not be so easily swayed. Campaigners and civil society groups monitoring negotiations say that this is the only way to prevent the "slate" system helping to install poorly performing states on the new Council. They fear that, if the bar is set at a simple majority, governments with poor records will use the "African solidarity" argument to ensure that they get all the African votes and thus enough to win a seat. A two-thirds requirement would, however, make it more likely that serial human rights abusers would be rejected, and force the regional groups to submit alternative candidates.

Time to act

Effort by African civil society is now urgently needed to help shift the position of individual countries within the African Group, and get those countries to speak out.

South Africa is a co-chair of the overall HRC negotiations and must remain neutral, eliminating one natural African leadership voice. But countries such as Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, Mali, and others could make a real difference to the outcome if persuaded to back the "two-thirds" proposal. It is time to press our governments to endorse a requirement of direct, individual voting for countries who wish to be members of the new Council, with a two-thirds majority required for election. Further, a candidate state’s human rights record and its pledges to cooperate with the Council must be a qualification for candidacy.

But if success is achieved here, that won’t be the end of the story. Getting the rules for election right is only the first stage. After that, we still need to focus on getting credible candidates elected – and once again, civil society leadership will be key.