"U.N. Hypocrisy" - Syria Set to Retain Seat on U.N. Human Rights Panel, do Syrians bleed differently?

"U.N. Hypocrisy" - Syria Set to Retain Seat on U.N. Human Rights Panel, do Syrians bleed differently? (CNSNews).By Patrick Goodenough.
A U.S.-led effort to expel Syria from a United Nations committee dealing with human rights looks set to fail Thursday, when a meeting in Paris considers a resolution that criticizes Syria – but stops short of calling for its removal.
Opposition from Russia and a group of other mostly developing countries – among them some with poor human rights records, including China, Cuba and Zimbabwe – appears to have stymied an initiative by some Western and Arab states to get Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime kicked off the Committee on Conventions and Recommendations (CR), a subsidiary body of the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
UNESCO is the U.N. agency that lost U.S. funding last fall over an unrelated matter – its admission of “Palestine” – but the Obama administration has indicated that it wants a waiver of the relevant U.S. law to enable it to restore the funding, which amounts to 22 percent of UNESCO’s operating budget.
The Syria resolution is on the agenda of the UNESCO’s executive board, which wraps up a twice-yearly session in the French capital on Friday. Originally due to be discussed on Wednesday, the matter has been moved to Thursday afternoon.
While there was speculation the delay was related to disputes over the text, UNESCO spokeswoman Sue Williams told CNSNews.com, “The issue was held over because the commission was running behind schedule.”
The Conventions and Recommendations committee is tasked to examine often sensitive communications received from individuals or organizations relating to human rights violations within UNESCO’s fields of competence – education, science, culture and communication (including freedom of opinion and expression.)
UNESCO’s 58-member executive board last November reappointed Syria to a two-year term on the committee, despite widespread revulsion at the Assad regime’s violent response to what began as largely peaceful protests but has become a civil war.
Syria got the nod because it was nominated by the Arab group as a “clean slate” candidate – a situation where the number of candidates is the same as the number of seats available for a regional group, precluding any contest. Syria is also a member of the executive board itself.
Among those condemning the decision were lawmakers, human rights and religious groups from a number of countries.
In the U.S., House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a leading critic of the U.N., said the UNESCO “continues to outdo itself with stunning displays of irresponsible and dangerous behavior,” and reiterated that the U.S. should continue to withhold funds “so our tax dollars are not used to support this increasingly irresponsible agency.”
The Obama administration indicated its intention to push for Syria’s removal from the committee.
“We should not allow the Syrian regime to stand as a judge of other countries’ human rights record while it systematically violates the human rights of its citizens, commits acts of sexual violence against women and children, and murders its own people,” U.S. ambassador to UNESCO David Killion said in a statement last month. “The regime has also repeatedly acted to silence the voice of the Syrian people and to repress independent media attempting to report on its misdeeds.”
“The Syrian regime’s actions are an affront to the dignity and human rights of the Syrian people, and it is not fit to sit on this body,” he said. “We plan to seek Syria’s removal from the CR.”
UNESCO is the U.N. agency that lost U.S. funding last fall over an unrelated matter – its admission of “Palestine” – but the Obama administration has indicated that it wants a waiver of the relevant U.S. law to enable it to restore the funding, which amounts to 22 percent of UNESCO’s operating budget.
The Syria resolution is on the agenda of the UNESCO’s executive board, which wraps up a twice-yearly session in the French capital on Friday. Originally due to be discussed on Wednesday, the matter has been moved to Thursday afternoon..Hmmm......... Assad, the 'reformer'.Read the full story here.