Human rights groups have expressed grave concerns at the lack of progress in the review of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, as the open-ended intergovernmental working group goes into its 2nd session.

The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the UN system made up of 47 States responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe. The Council was created by the UN General Assembly in 2006 with the main purpose of addressing situations of human rights violations and making recommendations on them. In a statement, the rights groups said it was ‘deplorable’ that the Council shows a lack of goodwill in addressing the weaknesses in its work and functioning as well as its categorical refusal to consider options that would improve its performance.

The groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, claim that several governments are holding up negotiations by neglecting to consider proposals to create mechanisms to address the selectivity and politicization in the Council through the intergovernmental process. The groups say these countries are mistaken in thinking they have little to gain in a Council which would be strengthened by addressing violations more effectively. The rights groups say these governments regard the review of the Human Rights Council, simply as a review, rather than a reform process.

In the statement, the groups said that, “Despite its explicit mandate to address and prevent violations, the Council has been made a passive spectator of many human rights situations, from Iraq to Guantanamo, from Iran to Zimbabwe, to the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt”.
The groups believe that the Council is disconnected from a majority of victims of human rights violations and that those governments that want to make believe the Council is doing fine and that no improvements are needed in its responsiveness to violations are more concerned about protecting themselves than fulfilling the mandate of the Human Rights Council.

The rights groups warn that a review that does not deal with the Council’s failure to protect human rights in concrete situations will be a failed one, adding that it is obvious to all which governments will be responsible for that outcome. The groups’ statement urges the Council to connect itself to the realities on the ground in large parts of the world and calls on all States to work constructively with the proposals and to reject the vision of the review that undermines any attempt to improve the Council’s response to real situations of human rights violations. The groups fear that vision is not only bankrupt - but is in the longer term, a real recipe for the demise of the Human Rights Council.