A Continuing Battle

Arab states at the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNHCHR) annual session are arming themselves with a barrage of resolutions condemning Israel.

The Jewish state has not sat on the Commission since 1970 and, this year, will be without the defensive shield of its principal ally, the United States.

For the first time since the Commission was created in 1946, the US has been reduced to observer status. It failed to win re-election to the 53-state body in an upset vote in New York last year.

In her opening address, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, said Palestinians continued to be subjected to a wide range of human rights violations. These were related to the ongoing occupation.

She said Israel also continued to suffer from the deliberate killings of civilians.

"I re-iterate my call for international observers to be present on the ground as a deterrent to the violations of human rights in the occupied Palestinian Territories and also to promote human security against suicide and other attacks on Israeli civilians," she told the delegates.

Fear of human rights violations through war on terror

Many keynote speeches at the six-week session, which began in Geneva, Switzerland on Monday, will address the implications of the September 11 terrorist attacks. These not only triggered the US-led "war on terror", but also raised fresh issues for the defenders of human rights.

Robinson (photo) said that as a consequence of the attacks in New York and Washington, international human rights norms "are at risk of being undermined". It was up to UNHCHR to "vigorously defend" those standards, she said.

This view was shared by non-government organizations. "Governments around the world are cynically using the banner of anti-terrorism to justify crackdowns on internal opposition," said Reed Brody, advocacy director at the US-based Human Rights Watch. "Other countries are happy to turn a blind eye to the brutality of their allies in the anti-terror cause."

The session will also train the international spotlight on Russia's bloody campaign against Muslim separatists in Chechnya and other human rights hotspots from Colombia to Iraq and Burma.

One newcomer on the agenda will be Zimbabwe. The European Union is preparing a resolution condemning what it sees as human rights violations by the government of President Robert Mugabe before and during this month's elections that returned him to power.

But one country that looks likely to escape unscathed this time is China. In the absence of Washington, no other member appears ready to single out Beijing for alleged repression of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group and violations against Buddhists in Tibet and Muslims in Xinjiang, diplomats said.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and a host of ministers will address the Commission, which will also examine reports ranging from torture to child abuse and racism.

Mary Robinson: a woman with powerful enemies

High Commissioner Robinson, long a thorn in the side of major powers for her outspoken views, said she would not seek a fresh term when her appointment ends in September.

The former Irish president surprised Annan last year when she said she wanted to leave. But she agreed to stay for another 12 months only after the Secretary-General insisted.

"I know that at times my voice may have been considered awkward, but I must say my inner ear was always tuned to the Secretary-General's words of advice to me at the time of my appointment as High Commissioner: ‘stay an outsider within the United Nations’," she said.

Human rights groups, whose support was a factor in Robinson's opting to reverse her initial decision last year, were disappointed, but not surprised.

"She will be a hard act to follow," said a spokeswoman for Amnesty International.