Repugnant fillip

Mahinda Rajapakse has had a good few months. First, he resoundingly defeated the LTTE, ending a war that had raged for almost three decades. Then, just as calls for an international investigation into his government's excesses during the final days of fighting were gaining strength, the United Nations essentially gave him a clean sheet. On 27 May, during a special session called to discuss Sri Lanka, the UN's Human Rights Council (HRC) passed a resolution praising Colombo's war policy, and without demanding anything of it in the current post-war context. The HRC went as far as to say that it "Welcomes the continued commitment of Sri Lanka to the promotion and protection of all human rights and encourages it to continue to uphold its human rights obligations and the norms of international human rights law."

That such a biased and uncritical assessment emerged from what can be seen as the highest human-rights body in the world is extremely disappointing. But a deeper look into the workings of the HRC reveals that the decision should not have been unexpected. Established in 2006, the body is an intergovernmental committee made up of 47 members, elected for three-year terms. The positions taken by the HRC are those backed by a majority of the governments as put to a vote – not that of senior UN staff. The Lanka resolution, for instance, was passed despite the urging of Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, that an independent probe was necessary into the abuses committed by both sides of the conflict.