May 3rd, 2009 by NGO Monitor Staff | Category: Durban Review Conference, Human Rights, UN

French philosopher and writer, Bernard-Henri Lévy, attended the Durban Review Conference which he considers a “total failure”. Here he argues that the only condition under which a repeat can be avoided is the dissolution of the Human Rights Council.

After Durban II, the Question of the United Nations, Bernard-Henri Levy, Huffington Post, April 28, 2009

Now the only remaining legitimate question is to know when, how, and under what conditions can the error and the insult be repaired: ah! the humiliation of the Rwandan ambassador in Geneva, crossing in front of the Palace of Nations the first evening, and understanding anew, just as during Durban I, that the Conference had been taken hostage by people determined to say nothing about the terrifying martyrdom of her people! The despair of the Burundians, Angolans, Sri Lankans, and other representatives of the untouchable Indians, or of the Christian minority of the Moluccas, who must have resigned themselves to the fact that their suffering would be lost in a debate hamstrung by this declaration: “Either the debate will focus on the question of Islamaphobia, the offense of blasphemy, or the racist nature of Zionism, or there will be no debate at all!” These millions, these tens of millions of victims, who should have been the beating heart of a Summit meant to lambast genocides and attacks on human rights everywhere in the world, but who were handed the verdict, as in the case of the Darfuris: “You are neither Jews nor Palestinians? Your misfortune has no link to the criminal State of Israel or its accessory and ally, the great American Satan? In that case, keep moving! There’s nothing of worth in your story! You literally don’t exist in the eyes of the brilliant ideologues charged by the United Nations to organize the event!” I see at least one condition under which the scandal not only does not happen again, but is one day repaired…The Human Rights Council must be dissolved. A Council must be reinvented. One equipped with a governing system that — unlike today — would make it impossible for murderous States to take control…Let’s take back the grand word “anti-racism” from the scoundrels who have hijacked it.