Abstract
The election of human rights-abusing states to the human rights bodies of the United Nations has long been a source of dissatisfaction. There have been repeated calls that such states should not be members of the UN Human Rights Council. This article compares the HRC records of Rwanda, an authoritarian state, with that of South Africa, a liberal democracy. The focus falls on 12 country-specific situations and nine civil and political rights issues that appeared before the HRC from 2017 to 2019. It is demonstrated that Rwanda has been a much stronger defender of international human rights than South Africa. This finding contradicts various empirical and theoretical studies that posit a positive relationship between domestic democracy and respect for human rights, on the one hand, and international support for human rights, on the other. This finding further suggests that demands that the HRC should only have members with respectable domestic human rights records should be tempered.
Highlights
The focus falls on 12 country-specific situations and nine civil and political rights issues that appeared before the Human Rights Council (HRC) from 2017 to 2019
Resolutions on economic rights and on the international system are not included in this survey, mainly because, in contrast to country-specific and civil and political rights resolutions, there is not much difference between Rwanda and South Africa’s voting records on these issues and they often are adopted without a vote, preventing us from seeing where Rwanda and South Africa differ
Rwanda is an authoritarian state that is overall supportive of human rights at the HRC
Summary
The election of human rights-abusing states to the human rights bodies of the United Nations (UN) – the UN Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the organisation that replaced it in 2006, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) – has long been a source of dissatisfaction. The reason why the CHR became dysfunctional, according to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was because states ‘sought membership of the Commission not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticise others’.1. Following negotiations about replacing the CHR with the HRC, when it became apparent that the new organisation’s membership rules would be similar to its predecessor’s, the US declared that it did not have ‘sufficient confidence’ that the new body would be better than the old and voted against the General Assembly Resolution that created the HRC.[2]. Haley demanded that the HRC change its membership rules (and do away with its exaggerated focus on Israel). While the rule of Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front has brought
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