The Human Rights Council reacts to Myanmar/Burma issue
Since August 26, 2007, the escalation of violence in Rangoon and other cities of Myanmar where military forces tried to suppress a series of peaceful protests of Buddhist monks and other civilians, draw the attention of the international community (contrary to what happened during other major demonstrations in the past, particularly in 1988) and put in the foreground the issue again of the serious problems of governance and human rights violations in this country of southeastern Asia. In view of these recent appalling developments, the members of the main UN body tackling with human rights issues, the Human Rights Council (HRC), decided to convene a special session of the Council (October 1-2, 2007) in order to discuss the Myanmar case, and to search for potential avenues towards a resolution condemning the human rights crisis in the country.
As it might be already known, Myanmar finds itself in a situation of political, social and economic fragility caused by the long domination of a military regime (the State Peace and Development Council, SPDC) which has shown no particular interest in the protection of civil and political rights, not to mention the lack of respect for fundamental freedoms and rights, namely the right to expression and the right to assembly. Moreover, the military junta has moved towards exacerbation of interethnic tensions in the country by suppressing the numerous minority groups living in the provinces. The building of military camps in minority provinces, the systematic confiscation of minority land by local authorities, and the disproportionate distribution of the national product to keep minority provinces in constant economic and social uncertainty, constitute only some of the elements which prove that the current regime can not stand as a credible interlocutor concerning the process of national reconciliation that the same regime tries to advertise at the various international fora.
But, how did we end up with the Human Rights Council special session on Myanmar?
Human rights situations in Myanmar has been a pending issue in the United Nations, and more precisely in the former Human Rights Commission, as well as in the body replacing it, the Human Rights Council. Several interventions on the repressive military junta of Myanmar have been made mostly by the civil society during the regular sessions of the HRC in March 2007 and June 2007, but the issue was unfortunately far down on the list of priorities. The reason was that the Council had more important preoccupations than to address human rights violations in non-mediaticized and not so politicized cases, such as the case of Myanmar. The process of institutional building of the first year of the newly created UN body was monopolizing the agenda and several reports were left as unfinished work by the former Human Rights Commission. However, an important diplomatic break (or better dead-end) in the beginning of 2007, which was produced on the other side of the Atlantic, in New York, came to influence the diplomatic developments in Geneva.
On January 13, 2007, China and the Russian Federation joined forces at the United Nations Security Council (henceforth UNSC) in order to block the resolution on the political situation in Myanmar/Burma put forward by the United States and Britain. The resolution at hand would have called the Burmese government to cease the persecution of opposition political leaders and minority groups. With the argument that the problems in Myanmar do not constitute a major threat for the international peace and security, both China and Russia claimed that the Myanmar issue should not be in the agenda of the UNSC, but it should be addressed in the Human Rights Council, in Geneva. This was a really smart diplomatic move, if we take into consideration the fact that although an important UN body, the Human Rights Council issues decisions and resolutions which are not binding in nature. Another important element is that the current composition of the HRC gives a majority of voices from countries of the developing world who oppose the "highly selective and politicized manner" with which countries of the developed world choose to bring forward country-specific cases for human rights scrutiny. Therefore, even if we reached a consensus on the facts related to human rights violations in Myanmar, the eventual document of the resolution would be far from challenging the current military regime of this developing country, as a whole.
In the end, on October 2, 2007, after long discussions and statements on Myanmar's latest events, on the "risk" to fall back to the vicious circles of politicization experienced by the former Human Rights Commission, and on the right or not of the international community to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state when no threat to international peace and security is present, the member states of the Human Rights Council adopted by consensus a resolution which is far more moderate than expected. The repetition of the phrase "[The Council] urges the Government of Myanmar", as well as the total absence of any reference to the obligation of Myanmar to fully cooperate with all mechanisms of the Human Rights Council (including also an eventual visit to the country by the Special Rapporteur, Mr. Pinheiro) are some of the major points that will obviously disappoint any person acquainted with the international system of human rights protection in general as well as with the political reality in Myanmar in particular.
Moreover, the general impression given by the Human Rights Council is that following the quasi-completion of its institutional building process, this newly-established UN body seeks to prove its efficiency and its determination to have the "job done", sometimes to the detriment of the real hopes and expectations of the peoples around the world, who are subjected to human rights violations.
Damianos Serefidis
Published also by the Center for International Politics Thessaloniki (CIPT), at http://www.cipt.gr
