STATEMENT OF U.S. SENATOR NORM COLEMAN
U.N. Human Rights Council Vote March 15th, 2006 - Washington, D.C.- - "In its first test to determine if it is capable of real reform, the United Nations has failed. The decision to confirm the creation of a weak, and ineffective, Human Rights Council underscores the inability of the organization to embrace real reform. I am disappointed in the outcome. We must continue to pursue an aggressive reform agenda. The Congress(and US taxpayers) have the absolute right to demand reform and transformation of the UN as a precondition to continued financial support."

The United States has not paid it’s financial obligations to the United Nations since the late eighties. This country invented the U.N. and while we were able to exercise hegemony over the rest of the world, no one complained. We’ve gotten our comeuppance and must drink sour grape juice. Declaring the Human Rights Council to be weak and ineffective the same day it was empanelled does not seem to embody the presumption of innocence underpinning our justice system nor by extension, our superior understanding of human rights.

I have argued for years that only by exposing countries with a poor human rights record to international scrutiny that comes from serving on these types of councils can we apply positive peer pressure. True, the U.S. doesn’t currently possess the leadership to affect positive change and the Human Rights Council should only have one or two renegades on it at a time. Never the less prejudging the U.N.’s effectiveness / ineffectiveness or underscoring organizational inability on the part of any other entity is pure hubris. This is after all the same administration that ceded the gulf coast to a hurricane.