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60th
session of the UN Commission on Human Rights: The farce continues
Reporters Without Borders
March
15, 2004
25 member-countries
have not ratified the conventions they are supposed to enforce.
United Nations
- Geneva. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which has
lost all credibility since Libya was appointed to chair it last
year, will hold its 60th session in Geneva from 15 March to 23 April.
Twenty-five
of its 53 member-countries have not even ratified all the conventions
and agreements it is called on to enforce. It's rather like asking
thieves to sit in judgment over criminals.
Reporters Without
Borders has launched a media campaign to expose this farce. Worst
offenders are Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba and Zimbabwe, says the organisation.
Cuba and China
are two biggest prisons in the world for journalists, Saudi Arabia
is under severe censorship and the Zimbabwean government is doing
all it can to stamp out the independent press. Yet all of them are
members of the UN Human Rights Commission. They are the most striking
examples of the absurd system where countries are both accusers
and accused.
Reporters Without
Borders last year sent recommendations for an urgent and radical
reform of the Commission to the United Nations and to several countries,
suggesting that only states that had ratified all the international
human rights treaties and conventions be allowed to sit on the Commission.
It also called for the dropping of "no action" motions, which block
any discussion of countries that extensively violate human rights.
The 25 countries
that have not ratified all human rights agreements are:
- Bahrain
- Bhutan
- China
- Congo
- Cuba
- Egypt
- Eritrea
- Ethiopia
- Gabon
- Guatemala
- India
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Mauritania
- Nigeria
- Pakistan
- Qatar
- Saudi Arabia
- Sierra Leone
- South Korea
- Sudan
- Swaziland
- Uganda
- United States
- Zimbabwe
Bureau Afrique
/ Africa desk
Reporters sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders
5, rue Geoffroy-Marie
75009 Paris - France
Tel : (33) 1 44 83 84 84
Fax : (33) 1 45 23 11 51
afrique@rsf.org / africa@rsf.org
www.rsf.org
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