Azerbaijan Has Got The Right To Assess Democracy In Armenia

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijan did not pass in the first round. In the second round 103 states out of 198 voted for that country. Thus, Azerbaijan received three votes more than the required minimum. Armenia lacked just a few votes. According to the ballot, held after the end of elections, Azerbaijan will be present in the Council for 3 years whereas other countries, like Poland or the Check Republic - for only a year. Did Armenia lose much failing in the elections and not getting in the Human Rights Council? It is worth mentioning that the UN Council for Human Rights has inherited almost all of the authority, which the Geneva Commission for Human Rights had before being liquidated on June 16, 2005 at the insistence of the United States and other Western countries. The main complaint against the Commission consisted in the fact that its member countries where far away from democracy. The "cosmetic" reform, which simply changed the name of the organ, did not however solve the main problem. And now, countries that have a very vague idea about human rights, will watch for the protection of human rights in the whole world. The newly created council will regularly analyze human rights reports in certain countries and present its summary to the UN Security Council.

Armenia has twice been elected to the Human Rights Commission. It is noteworthy that membership in the commission allowed to use certain diplomatic mechanisms which sometimes were very useful. Countries against which the world community has claims concerning human rights protection, had to show special attention to Armenia in order to win our support. Very often that support turned to be useful to such great powers as China and Russia. Yerevan in its turn enjoyed Moscow's and Beijing's favors. In this sense membership in the commission was really very important. However the fact that this time Armenia was not elected to the reformed UN organ is not a tragedy at all. Moreover, Yerevan was actually ready for possible undesirable results. Finally, it would be really unfair if Armenia was included in the organ three times in a row especially because from now on elections are held by the principle of regional representation. In the Western European region there are many countries, which have never been in the Commission. Everything would be normal if not the news about Azerbaijan's election to the Council...

The membership of Azerbaijan in the Human Rights Council is of course undesirable for Armenia. Though decisions of that organ are not obligatory, the very fact that Azerbaijan will be assessing state of affairs in Armenia is annoying. It is quite clear that Azerbaijan will not be objective. But in this case more important is the question - do Baku leaders have the moral right to evaluate democracy in other countries when in Azerbaijan the situation with human rights is just deplorable? International remedial organizations give an unambiguously negative answer. Yet before voting the respectable international "Human Rights Watch" organization published the list of countries whose membership in the Council was fully inadmissible. In that list Azerbaijan was the first not only because of the alphabetic order. Azerbaijan is followed by China, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Armenia is of course not included in the list. Thought the leaders of "Human Rights Watch" do not think that in our country things with democracy are ideal, they saw Armenia as a member state of the Human Rights Council.

Displeasure with election results has been expressed also by another influential remedial organization, called "Amnesty International". Leaders of this organization underlined that among member states of the Council there are those where the situation of human rights is simply catastrophic. Leaders of Moscow Helsinki group announced that in the current composition the Council loses its sense since it is initially discredited by the membership of Russia, China, Azerbaijan and Pakistan. The United States are also indignant at the election results and have even refused to support the Council since the mechanism of its formation has allowed involvement of such countries like Azerbaijan. At the same time, the Ombudsman of Azerbaijan Elmira Suleymanova dares to say that election of Azerbaijan to the Council is the appreciation of high level of democracy in Azerbaijan by the UN. Can we call this anything else but complete nonsense?