JOANNE MARINER OF HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH writes on “How the Abusive Protect the Repressive at the U.N.” It’s not just UNScam:

Sudan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Russia: one thing these countries have in common is that their governments violate human rights flagrantly and systematically. But another thing they share, astonishingly enough, is membership on the U.N. body meant to monitor and prevent human rights violations.

Pakistan, China, Egypt, Congo–the list goes on. When it comes to rights-abusing countries, the 53-member U.N. Commission on Human Rights has plenty of depth. . . .

Groups such as Human Rights Watch have been complaining about the U.N. commission’s membership problem for years. The focus of the abusive governments on the commission, Human Rights Watch warns, is on “minimizing the exposure of their own human rights record rather than on stigmatizing the worst human rights violations in the world and devising methods to bring about effective responses to these abuses.”

The recently-released report on the future of the United Nations deserves credit for acknowledging this issue, except that the problem is clearly too glaring to ignore. Eight months ago, at its last annual session, the commission’s trend toward rejecting censure of its most abusive members was unmistakable.

The U.N.’s claim to moral legitimacy seems rather shaky.