With the US in virtually lone opposition, the UN overwhelmingly approved a new Human Rights Council on Wednesday to replace the widely discredited Human Rights Commission.
The vote in the 191-nation General Assembly was 170-4 with three abstentions.
Joining the US in opposing the resolution were Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau. Abstaining were Belarus, Iran and Venezuela.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who first proposed the council a year ago, hailed the decision, saying, "This gives the United Nations the chance -- a much-needed chance -- to make a new beginning in its work for human rights around the world."
But the US' UN Ambassador John Bolton said the proposed council was "not sufficiently improved" over the commission, which has been faulted for permitting rights abusers to join.
"We must not let the victims of human rights abuses throughout the world think that UN member states were willing to settle for `good enough,'" Bolton said in a statement after the vote. "We must not let history remember us as the architects of a council that was a `compromise' and merely `the best we could do' rather than one that ensured doing `all we could do' to promote human rights."
He said that the US would "work cooperatively" to strengthen the council and looked forward to reviewing its effectiveness in addressing rights abuse cases like Sudan, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Myanmar.
He did not say whether the US would be a candidate to serve on the council, a critical consideration for the its future.
The resolution calls for the election of new council members on May 9 and a first meeting of the council on June 19. The commission will be abolished on June 16.
The new council will have 47 members, as opposed to the commission's 53; the means to make timely interventions in crises; and a year-round presence, with three meetings a year at its Geneva base lasting a total of at least 10 weeks. The commission has traditionally met for six weeks, once a year.
Under terms meant to restrict rights abusers from membership, candidates for the council will be voted on individually rather than as a regional group, their rights records will be subject to mandatory periodic review and they will be subject to suspension if found guilty of committing abuses themselves.
But the final text had a weakened version of the crucial restriction in Annan's original plan, which required new members to be elected by two-thirds of those voting. Instead, council members will be elected by an absolute majority of member states.
Major rights organizations and a number of US allies in the UN -- who had all lobbied Washington to reconsider its opposition -- argued that the terms were far better than existing ones and would keep major abusers off the council. But Bolton disagreed and singled out the compromise as a reason the US could not back the council.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS