Opinion
Iran and its allies are calling the shots at the UN
A cabal of the world’s worst human-rights abusers work to protect themselves and attack Israel
September 7, 2023 14:45
3 min read
A cabal of the world’s worst human-rights abusers work to protect themselves and attack Israel
September 7, 2023 14:45Iran’s appointment as the next chair of the UN Human Rights Council social forum is the latest example of a trend I describe in my book Authoritarian Century, where our enemies get a vote in our success as democratic societies. Increasingly, the balance of power is tilting away from the West to developing countries that harbour antisemitism.
These countries have much to gain by working together and are building a grand anti-democratic coalition including Iran, China, Russia and North Korea, and using their resources to autocratise smaller states multilaterally. When China broke the Hong Kong Declaration for the umpteenth time in 2019 by violently suppressing the Hong Kong protests, it did so knowing full well that 43 of its Belt and Road Initiative partners would be supporting it. Beijing has effectively picked up the baton from the USSR, assembling a cabal of the most human rights- abusive nations to protect each other from criticism. Israel is condemned at every opportunity, while violations in countries such as Pakistan often pass without even a discussion. This is the soft power of authoritarianism.
The most well-known example of this is via the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), a body ostensibly designed to uphold the principles of human rights worldwide, but which has devolved into a platform that not only disproportionately condemns Israel but also legitimises antisemitism on a global scale. One need not look far to find evidence of the UNHRC’s obsession with Israel. A nation the size of New Jersey has faced more condemnations from the council than the rest of the world combined. It reflects that the council’s motivations and integrity are beholden to countries with some of the worst human rights records on the planet.
The US and its European allies were able to block Syria from being given a UNHRC seat after having authorised the slaughter of tens of thousands, but could not prevent the admission of Venezuela, another serial human rights abuser. Preventing entryism by antisemitic and authoritarian regimes is a game we may end up losing. We need to strengthen an “alliance of democracies” where these institutions are now failing.
In 2018 the US, under Trump, withdrew from the UNHRC over its bias against Israel. The council’s disproportionate focus was a stark reminder of the challenges faced in addressing the global rise of antisemitism. In 2021, the Biden administration rejoined with the hope of influencing change from within. This was another in a long procession of blundered appeasements from international bodies and NGOs. The latest, just last week, saw Russia and Iran re-admitted to the Nobel Foundation, despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Iran’s involvement.
The UNHRC is but one example of multi-lateral institutions being co-opted by authoritarians, but it is also potentially the most egregious. The Council’s name and profile gives many of its perverted judgments an air of legitimacy — stoking antisemitism by giving it a platform on the international stage. Lost on no one should be the fact that the UN Commission on Human Rights, the UNHRC’s predecessor, played a key role in drafting the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Those “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind” referred above all to the worst crime in history, the Holocaust. It was Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin who developed the legal concepts with which Nazi war criminals were tried. How perverse it is that these institutions are now used to perpetuate the same prejudice that led to their existence.
One key example from the UNHCR was in April 2022, when its resolution affirmed the “legitimate right of the Palestinian people to resist the Israeli occupation in order to free its land and be able to exercise its right of self-determination”. This was used by non-Palestinian groups such as Hezbollah to claim that their violence was sanctioned by the UN, such as in November that same year, when an attack on Hebron was justified by the Permanent Observer for Palestine at the UN in this exact way.
Now Iran has been elevated to chair the UNHRC social forum. Iran has repeatedly vowed to “wipe out” Israel. Iran’s leading role at the UNHRC sends a chilling message to Jews and further undermines the council.
Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE is a director at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington DC and research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute US Army War College