Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last year I served as the parliamentary adviser to the United Nations General Assembly and was part of Australia’s delegation at the 60th session of the General Assembly. Of that experience, the first thing I would say is that I cannot speak highly enough of the young men and women of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and other Commonwealth departments who represent us at the Australian Mission to the United Nations. They are very effective, very diligent and really a great testament to the sorts of young people that Australia produces.

The 60th session began with the leaders summit. Over 150 leaders visited New York at that time and they came up with a summit outcome document. This was in the context of the United Nations reform kicked off in some ways by the Secretary-General. There were three limbs of that United Nations reform: firstly, Security Council reform; secondly, the establishment of a peace-building commission; and, thirdly, consideration of replacing the old and discredited United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

The peace-building commission has been set up, the Security Council reform has certainly stalled, but I would like to speak about the replacement of the Commission on Human Rights. It was widely realised that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was failing in the job that it was meant to do. This was recognised by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. It was even recognised by countries like Cuba. It was unable to act in places like Darfur and Kosovo and in places where human rights were being systematically violated, such as Zimbabwe and Burma. So in the end, rather than looking at reforming this body, it was decided to start afresh, to scrap this 53-member body and replace it with a 47-member Human Rights Council.

The rules for the new council were established in March. Any member of the council would require 96 votes, or an absolute majority of the General Assembly, to become elected. It was thought that this would be enough to stop the really bad abusers of human rights from getting elected. Australia’s position, along with Canada and New Zealand, was that this bar was too low and that we should require a two-thirds majority of member states. The European Union, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have all said that they will not vote onto the council countries where there is objective evidence of gross and systemic violations of human rights, including those that are subject to UN Security Council sanctions for such abuse.

Overnight the vote was held for the first elections to this new body, the Human Rights Council, and the first thing to say is that countries that previously had been able to get elected through a vote just of their regional organisation and, having been elected, to avoid any scrutiny of their human rights, did not stand for election. Sudan, North Korea, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan and Burma did not run for election.

The United States based Human Rights Watch said that, of all the candidates, they found there were seven who, based on their record of votes on human rights resolutions, their signatories and membership of various human rights treaties, were unworthy of membership. They termed those seven to be Russia, China, Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Azerbaijan. Of those countries, only Iran missed out. Azerbaijan got there on the second round. They did not get an absolute majority of the General Assembly in the first round. But Cuba was elected, Russia was elected and China, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were also elected. I should point out that Canada, whom we worked very closely with in that forum, was also elected. Ghana topped the pool of the African countries, Brazil topped the pool of the Latin American countries, India of the Asian countries, Germany of the Western European group and the Russian Federation of eastern Europe.

This is a new start for the United Nations human rights body. I think the jury is still out. It is definitely an improvement on what we have seen. These countries that have been elected, including Cuba, are now required to look at their own human rights practices— (Time expired)