The Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI) welcomes today’s historic consensus decision by the UN General Assembly to suspend Libya’s membership in the Human Rights Council. Today’s vote is unprecedented; never before has a state’s membership in any UN human rights body been suspended.
The resolution calling for Libya’s suspension was co-sponsored by more than 60 states that supplemented the original sponsors Botswana, Jordan, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Qatar. In introducing the resolution, Lebanon emphasized that the General Assembly’s action is procedural, exceptional and temporary, and that the General Assembly may review and change its decision to suspend Libya’s membership in the Council at a later date, perhaps following a change in government. Link to UNGA Resolution
In suspending Libya from the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly invoked its power, outlined in General Assembly Resolution 60/251, to “suspend the rights of membership in the Council of a member of the Council that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights.” The action by UN bodies responds to Libya’s use of brutal and disproportionate force against individuals participating in protests against the government since February 16; to date, these abuses have reportedly led to the deaths of an estimated 1,000 people. The Libyan government has also restricted Internet access and has attempted to limit humanitarian access to sites of conflict that remain under its control. Last week, Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s ruler, publicly referred to protesters as “rats” and “cockroaches” and threatened that citizens would “cleanse Libya house by house” until the protests ceased. In this context, it was surprising that while the Human Rights Council’s recommendation on Libya “strongly condemn[ed] the recent gross and systematic human rights violations committed in Libya,” the General Assembly resolution did not similarly explicitly find that Libya had committed such “gross and systematic violations.”
Indeed, although the General Assembly resolution was adopted by consensus, Venezuela subsequently made a reservation to its vote in its oral comments after the vote, arguing that the decision to suspend Libya’s membership in the Council should have only taken place following the conclusion of the credible, independent commission of inquiry established by the Human Rights Council. In remarks following the vote, a number of additional states, including Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia, expressed concern about the Libya’s suspension from the Council for a variety of reasons, including claims that reports regarding the abuses in Libya had been manipulated by Western media; other states, such as Russia, cautioned that the General Assembly’s decision should not be seen as setting a precedent for future action.
The Human Rights Council’s strong action in Friday’s special session was particularly noteworthy given the Council’s particularly unimpressive record regarding its scrutiny of Libya’s human rights record in the past. Muammar Qaddafi’s more than 40-year reign in Libya has been marked by severe repression of freedom of expression and association, among other abuses. In 2007, Libya reported to the UN Human Rights Committee, the expert treaty body that reviews states’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In its concluding observations on Libya, the treaty body expressed concern at the large number of enforced disappearances and cases of extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions in Libya, including Libya’s ongoing failure to provide information on the 1996 massacre at Abu Salim prison, in which an estimated up to 1,200 inmates were killed. The Committee also expressed concern about reports of systematic use of torture; corporal punishment, including amputation and flogging.
Despite this long history of abuse, Libya has not previously been the subject of a resolution by the Human Rights Council. To the contrary, Libya served as chair of the Council’s predecessor institution, the UN Human Rights Commission, in 2003 and again in 2009 as chair of the Durban Review Conference. In May 2010, Libya was elected to serve on the UN Human Rights Council; running unopposed, it received 155 of 192 possible votes. Later, in November 2010, Libya, like all other UN member states, was examined in the Universal Periodic Review process. Many UN members hesitated to condemn the Libyan government’s well-documented and extensive violations of the human rights of its citizens, and in fact, a significant number of states actually praised Libya on its record. Prior to last week, none had pressed for a stand-alone resolution critical of Libya in the Council. Given this history, the February 25 special session of the Human Rights Council and today’s session of the General Assembly were extraordinary, both with respect to Libya specifically and with respect to much-needed action to strengthen membership criteria for participation in UN institutions to protect human rights.
In the months to come, states that strive to ensure that the Human Rights Council’s recent actions lead to genuine human rights protection and accountability for perpetrators of gross abuses of human rights will need to take a number of steps, both on Libya and on the work of the Council more generally.
(1) On Libya, the Commission of Inquiry established by the Council’s resolution has been given a strong mandate: “to establish the facts and circumstances of such violations and of the crimes perpetrated, and, where possible, identify those responsible to make recommendations, in particular, on accountability measures.” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, should move quickly to appoint qualified, independent, expert members to the commission of inquiry so that it can begin its investigation without delay. Libyan authorities should fully cooperate with the Commission. Furthermore, to ensure adequate scrutiny in the future, the Human Rights Council members should appoint a country-specific special rapporteur on Libya at their next session; the Libyan government should provide unimpeded access to all thematic special rapporteurs who have requested to visit; and Libya should submit reports to all UN human rights treaty bodies at which its reports are delinquent.
(2) States participating in the current 5-year review of the Human Rights Council should adopt changes to the working methods of the Council, particularly to improve the quality of the Council’s membership, so that in the future, states that have committed gross and systematic violations of human rights are not permitted to serve on the Council. Such changes could include assessing whether the pledges made by prospective members of the Council have been achieved or creating an independent mechanism to assess the human rights records of countries seeking membership on the Council. Moreover, in the event that a member state of the Council is suspended, states should ensure that such suspension should remain in effect until all gross and systematic human rights violations have ceased and the perpetrators of such violations have been held accountable.
These steps will allow the Council not only to continue to effectively address the violations in Libya, but also to apply similar standards to address other states that commit gross and systematic violations of human rights in the future, and to restore the professionalism and enhance the credibility of the UN in the human rights field.
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