UN watchdog a costly joke

Saudi Arabia’s election by the UN General Assembly in 2016 to a three-year term on the 47-member UN Human Rights Council, which purports to be the world’s top human rights watchdog, was always an absurdity. Amid the speculation surrounding the fate of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi it is even more so. Yet a weekend UN announcement, quoting UN General Assembly president Maria Garces, disclosed that the Arab kingdom had been reaffirmed to serve out its term on the council until 2019, alongside other noted human rights proponents such as China and Cuba.

Nothing better illustrates the inanity of the UN agency, which Australia joined last year, or the wisdom of Donald Trump’s decision to abandon US membership. The President did so because of the council’s one-eyed preoccupation with Israel, the Middle East’s only functioning democracy and upholder of the rule of law.

Saudi Arabia has no legitimate claim to be a UNHRC member given its egregious treatment of women, religious intolerance and its execution of at least 150 people a year, many by beheading in public, including, last year, a teenager who took part in a small pro-democracy demonstration.

But it is far from the only human rights delinquent overseeing the “world’s top human rights watchdog”. Pakistan, where Christian woman Asia Bibi is on the brink of being hanged after being sentenced to death for so-called “blasphemy” when fellow Muslim field workers refused to drink from the same water cup on religious grounds, is also a member. Among others elected or re-elected to the council last week were the African states of Cameroon and Eritrea as well as Bahrain, where pro-democracy demonstrators have been imprisoned for years, and The Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte has allowed death squads free rein.

Much in the Khashoggi case is yet to emerge. None of it is likely to assist Saudi Arabia’s standing as the West’s ally in the Arab world or its potential role in helping restart Palestinian peace talks and thwarting Iran’s quest for regional hegemony.