Sorry, We Can Only Ignore So Many Atrocities At A Time

By Baudelaire Ndong Ella, President, United Nations Human Rights Council

I do wish all those people criticizing the UNHRC for its important work would understand that we are first and foremost a human rights council. We’re a rights council run by humans. As such, we are not perfect. We cannot ignore all massacres and atrocities at once. It takes time.

Some achievements are by nature beyond us. ISIS is beheading, raping, mass-murdering, force-converting, and generally oppressing people throughout eastern Syrian and northwestern Iraq, but the vagaries of bureaucracy and our own human limitations mean we simply haven’t had the opportunity to properly dismiss that barbarity, and perhaps we never will. We – and the world – will simply have to accept that. We are only human.

As for Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, well, we have to focus on something. With so many barbaric violations of human rights taking place all the time – Sudan, Congo, Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Burma, Syria, Lebanon, and now even Ferguson, Missouri – it takes all the effort we can muster to rivet our attention on this small patch of land surrounded by other, larger lands where more egregious violations are routine. Would our critics prefer a council without focus?

And we certainly can focus. This body has issued more condemnations of Israel than of all other countries combined. Israel is the only country about which there is a mandated regular session of the council. The only employee of the council with an unlimited term is the Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories. Specifically, to look at Israeli violations – and specifically not those perpetrated by Palestinians. In order to properly ignore the vast majority of the world’s ongoing atrocities, we must be engaged in something. But not something that might require ethical consistency. Or humanity. We’re only human.