Recently, the United States was voted off the U.N. Human Rights Commission. For the first time in the history of the United Nations, the committee, created through the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, will be without a U.S. voice.
The decision is an insult to the American people and a victory for tyrannical regimes, including China, Sudan, Iraq and Cuba, whose leaders are gloating at the vote. But the decision is also a terrible setback to the cause of human rights and democracy, not simply because U.S. interests are involved but also because the United States is the only country in the world that has established a significant governmental infrastructure for monitoring human-rights violations.
Ever since the administration of President Jimmy Carter, the nation has deployed considerable State Department resources to document and investigate human-rights violations around the world. Each year, it publishes detailed and voluminous global reports on human-rights abuses and on the violation of religious freedoms.
In Congress, there are important monitoring mechanisms in the form of a human-rights caucus and various House and Senate oversight commissions, committees and subcommittees. Such engagement has created a high degree of expertise within the executive and legislative branches, giving U.S. condemnations of rights violations a high degree of credibility.
The countries that were elected in place of the United States include two smaller democracies, Austria and Sweden, which for all their serious concern for human rights simply do not have comparable resources to devote to human-rights issues and lack the clout of the world's only superpower. The third country that was favored was France, which is popular among tyrants because its foreign policy cynically shies away from condemnation of most repressive regimes.
How can it be that the United States, a superpower and the world's second most populous democracy (after India), was stripped of its place on the U.N. commission? Numerous factors contributed to the result. But there appear to be four main reasons.
First, it is clear that the tyrants of the world are far more cohesive in protecting their interests than democracies. Their desire to strike a blow against the United States was decisive to the voting results.
Second, the antiquated bloc system of voting at the UN has created a complex set of regional and sub-regional quotas for slots on the UN's leading agencies and commissions. This means that democracies are frequently pitted against each other for a limited number of regional seats while dictatorships still predominate in the Mideast, Africa and Asia.
Third, the United States has been taking an activist role in condemning human-rights violations and in offering support for democratic opposition groups in closed societies. This stance has angered many tyrants and has alienated some democracies that regard this activism as bullying.
Finally, the United States was in a political interregnum. While the process of confirming Bush administration appointees has been moving forward at a normal pace, the vote came at a time when much of the State Department's upper tier, including the post of U.N. ambassador, has not been filled.
There are some sobering and unwelcome lessons from the results of the vote.
Liberals who support international cooperation should soberly assess the dangers of ceding U.S. sovereignty to international structures such as the International Criminal Court in the current environment in which coalitions inimical to U.S. interests can prevail. At the same time, those conservatives who support a go-it-alone U.S. foreign policy should remember that unilateral action will only serve to weaken the nation's voice at international bodies.
There is a middle ground between blindly opting into international treaties and structures and reflexively pulling from international participation. That middle ground can be created around a policy seeking to recapture the U.N. and its agencies for democratic values.
Happily, there already is a means to achieve this end. Last June, foreign ministers and other high-ranking representatives of over 100 governments signed on to a declaration on the "Community of Democracies." A centerpiece of that Warsaw Declaration was the obligation — proposed by India — to create caucuses of democracies at all regional and global international organizations. In the waning months of the Clinton administration, several planning meetings aimed at creating a democracy caucus at the UN were held. But, this potentially significant new structure of cooperation was put on the backburner and never moved beyond very preliminary declarations of good will.
Perhaps the vote to deny the United States its place on the U.N. Human Rights Commission can be a wakeup call that helps invigorate a coalition of democracies within the U.N. system. Cooperation among democracies could help recapture the UN and make it an institution that is once again a clear voice for human rights and democracy.
Such resolute action — and not the feel-good rhetoric of moral outrage — is the best way to respond to the most recent setback to U.S. interests and the cause of freedom at the UN.
Adrian Karatnycky is President of Freedom House, a non-governmental organization that is accredited to the United Nations.