Two significant appointments have been made at the United Nations in the last week, but both question the integrity of the organisation and its member states. Backing from Africa ensured that Zimbabwe, the open sore of Africa, became chair of the commission on sustainable development. There was predictable outrage from Western diplomats; the deputy US secretary for environment frothed:
“We really think it calls into question the credibility of this organisation to have a representative from a country that has decimated its agriculture, that used to be the breadbasket of Africa and can’t now feed itself."
He has a point; for those of us at a safe distance from international diplomacy, the election has an undeniable black humour which would not look out of place in an Evelyn Waugh novel. After all, it is hard to imagine a state less sustained and developed and more regressive and destructive. Zimbabwe is governed by a tyrannical despot who has stolen power, trampled on human rights and wrecked a promising economy. The annual inflation of that economy now stands at an impressive 3,700%. To compound this, the travel ban on Mugabe's associates means Francis Nhema, the tourism minister who will take charge of the commission, will not be permitted to enter the countries he has been elected to instruct.
Much of the British press attention given to the election has lamented on Africa's failure to recognise what is good for itself (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2078529,00.html). However, pointing this view dodges our own culpability. Western diplomats had the opportunity to oppose Zimbabwe at the nomination stage last month, but chose to gamble on the probability that the country would not be elected. Instead, Britain decided not to appear heavy-handed, or more specifically, as the over-arching colonial master it used to be, and allowed its personal sense of shame to override action for what would surely have been the greater good.
This debacle was compounded by the selection of the next round of members for the human rights council. This is the human rights council set up two years ago to replace the disgraced human rights commission, abandoned when membership was granted to autocratic regimes who grouped together to protect the others abuses. Among the members of the new council for 2010 is Egypt, despite the opposition of 19 human rights organisations who petitioned the UN to revoke its candidacy.
In many ways, Egypt is to human rights what Zimbabwe is to sustainable development. Egypt is one of the few countries to have jailed a blogger - Abdelkarim Suleiman received a four-year sentence in February - for anti-government comments made on his website. Earlier this year, a dubious referendum passed series of constitutional reforms which tightened President Hosni Mubarak's hold on the country. Opposition parties were concerned, rightly as it has turned out, because they are now the verge of extinction. The 88 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, elected to parliament as independent candidates with the ideal of forming a party, represent the biggest opposition to Mubarak. Not however, under the new reforms, which ban all religious political parties. Ostensibly, this is to protect the country in a fragile area from fundamentalism, in practice, it is to protect Mubarak and his successor. Another wolf in sheep's clothing is Article 179. Where previously security services were granted extraordinary powers to detain and question suspected terrorists, this right has now been removed. This sounds like a reigning in of police power, but in practice will become a liberalisation of the use of torture.
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