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07/24/2004:
"Rights Group Evades Vietnam Drive to Bar It at UN"
New York Times/ReutersUNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A human rights group on Friday beat back a campaign by Vietnam to bar it from taking part in the work of United Nations bodies for three years on grounds it had links to terrorism.
The 54-member U.N. Economic and Social Council rejected 20-22, with 11 abstentions, a resolution that would have suspended the Rome-based Transnational Radical Party from consultative status with the world body for three years.
The vote was a setback for a growing number of U.N. members -- such as China, Cuba, Libya and Zimbabwe, themselves targets of human rights groups -- that have banded together to exclude Western human rights groups from accreditation.
Some 2,000 grass roots or advocacy groups, known as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), have consultative status with the Economic and Social Council that enables them to give expert advice to various United Nations bodies and international conferences.
In recent years, the NGOs have been increasingly active in fields as diverse as international law, the environment, arms control and women's rights.
But the council and its committee charged with monitoring NGO participation are known for using politics to decide memberships. A recent report by a special U.N. panel, led by former Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, recommended an accreditation process that depended less on politics than on skills and expertise. full article
I am sure there is more to this story than meets the eye. NGO's, with their special access to 'hot spots' and their growing political influence, are a natural magnet for covert trouble-makers and partisan pirates of all types. George Soros' Human Rights Watch, quoted everywhere in high-minded condemnations over this and that, exhibit a most selective outrage. They are the favorites when it comes to a quote about Cuba or Venezuela or Darfur, and curiously silent about Haiti. If I see HRW complaining about anything, I am certain that there are far more complex forces at work than liberal humanitarianism. Darfur is a good target because the perpetrators are Arabs. Otherwise, the West would not be giving a rip about the suffering of dark-skinned black people there.
