[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 23 (Tuesday, February 28, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H418-H419]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the 
time of the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Florida?
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to voice my objections to 
the proposed United Nations Human Rights Council.
  The proposal offered by the U.N. General Assembly President is a far 
cry

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from the reforms that we envisioned just a year ago. If adopted as is, 
the proposed Council could continue the U.N.'s roll down to irrelevance 
and would inhibit the efforts of the United States to promote and 
protect human rights worldwide.
  Mr. Speaker, in creating the United Nations, an entity born from the 
ashes of the Holocaust and the struggle against tyranny in World War 
II, the nations of the world committed themselves to one goal: ``Never 
again.'' We would never again tolerate violations of fundamental 
freedoms and liberties endowed to each and every human being. A 
Commission on Human Rights was established to ensure that we would not 
waver in this commitment. It sought to protect the oppressed while 
holding the oppressors accountable for their actions. However, this 
commission has become a rogue's gallery, a country club for pariah 
states, a speaker's forum for dictators.
  No farmer would designate a fox to guard his henhouse. No member of 
the international community in 1945 would have Heimler serve as a judge 
in Nuremberg; yet the United Nations deemed it acceptable and credible 
to have the likes of China, Cuba, Iran, and Sudan to sit on its Human 
Rights Commission.
  We had to take action. As a result, the U.N. Reform Act was adopted 
by the House not once but twice, and it contained provisions to 
fundamentally reform the entities dealing with human rights at the 
United Nations. The Henry Hyde bill called for the United States to 
leverage our influence as well as our financial contributions to the 
United Nations in order to ensure that countries could only serve with 
members of any human rights body if they uphold the values embodied in 
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
  We provided specific criteria for membership, criteria which seemed 
obvious, even self-evident, or so we thought.
  It appears that it was not so obvious, not so self-evident, given 
that the current proposals for the U.N. Human Rights Council have no 
concrete human rights prerequisite for membership. But that is just the 
tip of the iceberg. There are other areas of grave concern.
  The draft for the creation of the U.N. Human Rights Council does not 
establish criteria for membership. All members of the U.N. would be 
eligible for membership. This means that gross human rights violators 
could easily serve on the newly renamed council. It would give greater 
power and influence to certain regional groupings. These nations would 
hold 55 percent of the votes, therefore marginalizing the influence of 
Western democracy while heightening the collective power of despotic 
regimes.
  It also makes it easier to call for special sessions of the council. 
Due to the new composition of the council, democratic nations such as 
ours and Israel would become targets for these special sessions. It 
would also require members to rotate off every two terms, which means 
that every 6 years the United States would be off the council.
  The United States must stand firm against these attempts. I commend 
John Bolton, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, for doing just 
that and raising the bar for other democratic nations to do the same. 
We must make it clear to the United Nations that we will not accept a 
simple reshuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic. We will not be 
pressured into a hasty vote on this Human Rights Council while much 
needs to be done, much needs to be reconsidered and studied.
  Let us recall our promise of ``Never again.'' Let us ask ourselves, 
does the proposed U.N. Human Rights Council fulfill that promise? If it 
does not, then let us make every effort to ensure that it does. We must 
prevent the Human Rights Council from also being hijacked and 
manipulated into a tool of oppression and tyranny, rather than standing 
for freedom and democracy.

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