By Lawrence Audu/
The Save Humanity Advocacy Centre (SHAC) is appalled to learn that the United States of America has withdrawn from the United Nations Human Rights Council, which the country’s UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley described as “cesspool of political bias.” The US left the Council when it has fully exploited it to bully its way around the world and at a time when it knows it has no further need for it.
The withdrawal is shameful and it is a confirmation that countries of the world have been made to operate under a dubious double standard that places one set of nations above the law and the other set subjected to impractically adhering to international conventions.
However, while agreeing with the US description of the UN Human Rights Council as “a hypocritical and self – serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights,” its withdrawal nonetheless calls for a reassessment of how countries have been hounded with standards that are discriminatorily applied.
Even though the US cited “chronic bias against Israel and a lack of reform” as reasons for its decision, SHAC is of the opinion that the country touted as the bastion of democracy and human rights withdrew from the Council to be able to implement a controversial immigration policy of snatching, separating children from their migrant parents and locking them in cages to discourage illegal entry into its territory. Even while it was still a member of the UN Human Rights Council, the US has the tradition of extra-judicially executing terror suspects globally, which means it never respected the Council or what it stands for.
This is the US taking steps to protect its population while hypocritically disregarding the rights of other countries to adopt measures that address their security challenges. Nigeria is tragically one of the countries where the UN Human Rights Council is used as shackles to prevent the government from dealing with terrorists in practical ways that ensures that the civilians are protected.
SHAC therefore calls on the Federal Government of Nigeria to follow in the steps of the United States by immediately withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council. The government should cite the hypocrisy of the Council, double standard and its disconnect from reality of combating terrorism as reason for terminating Nigeria’s membership. It must also demand apologies for all the time Nigeria has been maliciously maligned and undermined by entities that cite standards that other countries do not abide by.
Nigeria must further draw on such withdrawal from the Council to expel groups that hide in its shadows from the country. The UN Human Rights Council that the US has confirmed as flawed is one of the organs that Amnesty International uses to harass and blackmail Nigerian authorities, which makes it pertinent to ask questions about the objectivity of the reports that the organization has used to malign Nigeria in the past. If the Council that Amnesty International has used as a foundation is now confirmed to be cardinally flawed then all of the NGOs report are of no consequence since something cannot be built on nothing.
We accept that the issue of monitoring and observing adherence to human rights across the world cannot be allowed to be a free-for-all but we also note with all sense of seriousness that the current system is rigged in favour on the agents of destabilization, who coincidentally have Nigeria as one of their targets. We however believe that there should be a movement away from the existing compromised entities like the UN Human Rights Council and Amnesty International; SHAC’s prescription is that the world should now embrace an international coalition of human rights monitoring groups operating on a peer review template.
Lawrence Audu is
Executive Director at Save Humanity Advocacy Centre (SHAC)