UN Watch in the News

SA now skunk of the world

Rowan Philp, The Times (South Africa)
November 18, 2007

UN Watch Editor's Note: The UN Watch report cited below by the Sunday Times was actually released in May 2007. See discussion in our blog by clicking here.

South Africa’s human rights reputation is in tatters after a series of “sell-out” votes at the UN on issues ranging from rape and gay rights to tyranny.

This week the watchdog UN Watch ranked South Africa last, alongside China, Russia, Pakistan, Algeria and Saudi Arabia, on a human rights list.

Human rights organisations have branded Pretoria “the chief human rights villain”.

SA is accused of shielding Sudan, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar.

opposing a resolution on human rights abuses in Darfur in November 2006 — choosing instead to praise Sudan’s “co-operation”;
opposing a motion for the Security Council to hear a briefing on the crisis in Zimbabwe in March this year;
helping to bar two major gay rights organisations from being accredited at the UN in July;
helping to remove all United Nations scrutiny of human rights abuses in Belarus and Cuba — the “worst rights abusers in Europe and the Americas” in June; and
opposing a Security Council briefing on human rights abuses in the DRC in June.

Last week, the country led the blocking of a resolution condemning the use of rape as a weapon of war, saying it wanted more than just this form of rape condemned.

Human Rights Watch’s Steve Crawshaw said this was the “last straw”.

But Foreign Affairs Director-General Ayanda Ntsaluba said some resolutions were designed to promote Western agendas. “A mockery is made of human rights, with the impression created that certain human rights violations are tolerable because they are committed in some countries.”

South Africa’s ambassador to the UN, Dumisani Kumalo, accused the US of “whipping up the media, trying to make South Africa look bad”.

But UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said South Africa and India were “the biggest disappointments among free democracies”.

“Its [SA’s] reputation has gone from pro-human rights to purely anti-Western,” he said.

Thomas Wheeler, of the SA Institute of International Affairs, said South Africa had “lost the moral high ground ”.

But political analyst Adam Habib said South Africa had been right to oppose the “hidden political agendas of the Western powers”, although by failing to “go on to take the lead on those issues...our reputation has taken a hit.”