(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 24 July 2003 RSF press release: Reporters Without Borders suspended from UN Commission on Human Rights for one year The organisation has published a report on the commission’s accelerating decline, entitled “Wheeling and dealing, incompetence and ‘non-action'”, in which it recommends a radical overhaul. Reporters Without Borders’ consultative status […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 24 July 2003 RSF press release:
Reporters Without Borders suspended from UN Commission on Human Rights for one year
The organisation has published a report on the commission’s accelerating decline, entitled “Wheeling and dealing, incompetence and ‘non-action'”, in which it recommends a radical overhaul.
Reporters Without Borders’ consultative status with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was suspended on July 24 for one year at the request of Cuba, because activists from the organisation staged a protest during the inauguration of the commission’s last session in March against the decision to allow Libya to chair the commission.
Reporters Without Borders insists that granting the chair to Col. Gaddafi’s regime has been a disgrace to the commission.
The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the body that took this decision, never invited Reporters Without Borders to explain its action. The failure to respect sanction procedures has been criticised by the French government, which lodged a request for a postponement of any decision to suspend the organisation. This suspension of one of the few press freedom organisations to have consultative status with ECOSOC is an unfair decision and a farce of the kind that increasingly characterises the commission on human rights.
Reporters Without Borders today publishes a report which details the excesses, shortcomings and accelerating decline of this commission, in which dictatorships such as Cuba and China have taken over in order to strip it of all substance.
The report proposes a series of reforms that are essential if the commission is to be rescued: limiting the right to vote to those states that have ratified the main international human rights covenants, naming an independent human rights expert to chair the commission, and abolishing the so-called “non-action” motions that have repeatedly been used to block debates.
The complete report is available in English and French on the Reporters Without Borders website: www.rsf.org