Now, to the meat of the matter – the Council’s 9th session

 

Friends, 

 

With pleasantries now exchanged, it is time to rattle our keyboards like sabres, and to turn as blades our intellects to a dissection of the Human Rights Council session that just was. A ninth in three years.

 

I offer a synopsis of the session.

 

We have a new High Commissioner - whose cut of jib I like. Country mandates were either weakened (Burundi, Cambodia and Sudan), extinguished (Liberia) or left unchanged (Haiti). A Special Procedures mandate-holder fell on his sword (Yash Ghai) – though from my vantage point he looked pushed. The nonsensical construction “defamation of religions” has been thrown on the fire, with international human rights law the supposed phoenix to rise from the ashes, while freedom of expression is clinging to the ropes and gasping for breath. Panels on gender and missing persons claimed centre stage, but were less than room-fillers. Despite the sterling work of our man Desmond, Beit Hanoun remains little more than a protracted jawfest. Through its Complaint Procedure – toothless lion that it is – the Council has spared the Maldives (leaving it to climate change to finish the job), while keeping Turkmenistan cornered in its clandestine lair. The politics of the common-denominator saw four new State-appointed mandate-holders get the nod, with the search for Mr. Ghai’s successor now, no doubt, the subject of frenzied and salacious negotiation. The gauntlet that is the relationship between OHCHR and the Council is lodged firmly in the turf in anticipation of the March session. And speaking of battlefields, let us not forget the Durban Review Conference.

 

In the face of all this, the Council adopts without a vote a resolution entitled ‘Strengthening of the Human Rights Council’ – with straight bloody faces no less.

 

Sad state of affairs comrades! I was quite happy in the fridge. Why was my slumber interrupted for this?! Does it not speak volumes that a resolution on “international solidarity” goes to a bloody vote? Delegates – shame on you and your houses, to misquote old Willy.

 

I continue -

 

the EU and the African and Asian Groups refuse to shift from the shelter of their respective (yet intersecting) blocs, GRULAC’s watching the grass grow, and the few States prepared to make conscience their master have been left to the elements. 

 

Did I miss anything?

 

Ah, yes – time for a little introspection civil society. First of all, your numbers were down – not as many attending as at last September’s session. Your performance – highs and lows. The high – item 6 on the UPR – a solid, team effort full of sparky ideas that States and the secretariat would have done well to aim an ear at. The low point – item 9 – racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance, follow-up and implementation of the DDPA. Half of you didn’t turn up for starters. Most of those who did dusted-off speeches drafted for the 1985 session of the Commission and were swiftly spanked by the President and humiliated by choice States for it. Don’t even get me started on the issue of the bloody Hippopotami adorning the walls of églises françaises.

 

And while speaking of the President, have you taken him to task for his repeated public celebration of your bumless seats during the debacle that was item 9? I’m presuming no, non, нет.

 

I best stop here. Given the state of my liver, my personal physician has advised me against shedding too much bile.

 

I sign over to you now habibis. Spare no issue, no matter how prickly. But I implore you - keep to our mantra. Our conversations seek to augment and advance human rights, not deride them. The maximisation of the Council’s effectiveness is our goal. And, in so noble a pursuit, let there be no room for doubt that we at all times preserve international human rights law as our touchstone.

 

SS.

 

 

 

Dear Friends

While I have shared the little I can about myself with you already, I hope, as our conversations develop and deepen with time, that it is my convictions that you come to know and measure me by. There is much I have missed during my years frozen, and I am swiftly adapting to a world in which a man, with a jib like the cut of mine, no longer naturally finds his place. Remember, counting the years in el refrigerador, I am now circa 112 years old.

 

But I know my purpose. It is manifested in this blog.

 

I find it poetic that I was defrosted to bang together the Council’s user’s manual. Our destinies, if you like – that is, the Council and myself – are intertwined. As the Council is the new incarnation of the Commission that I helped establish, having had six decades to reflect, I too feel renewed, restored – save for a gimpy hip (the product of a mistimed parachute landing in the then-Dutch East Indies) and a bloated liver (the product of too many bloody fishing trips with Ernie).

 

Yet I digress my friends. I apologise. After sixty years in the cooler I am still regathering myself. Gandhiji always used to say to me “you take the long way around a point, Samji”. Alas, I still do. But I hope there are many points that we tackle together, comrades, as we together invest ourselves in the Council and its good work. Let it be our mantra, our mission, to never swerve from the hard, critical issues – to turn a sharp, critical eye to the ridiculousness and absurdity that so often envelops and inhibits our collective efforts to defend and advance human rights – and to at all times preserve international human rights law as our touchstone.

 

SS.

 

Praise for Sam

“Clandestine man of the year, 1948”

- Time Magazine

 

 

“I’ve nicknamed my Nobel Peace Prize “Sam””

- K. Annan

 

 

“There never was a better fishing partner”

- E. Hemingway

 

 

“For me, the “s” in “universality” stands for “Sam””

- E. Roosevelt

 

 

“A man of immensely refined taste”

- W.V. Liberace

 

 

“Un homme du premier ordre”

- R. Cassin

 

 

“A constant source of compelling argumentation”

- C. Malik

 

 

“Sam has the most manly moustache I’ve ever seen”

- Unnamed delegate

 

 

“The renaissance man of our times” (Note: quote given in 1947)

- P.C. Chang

 

 

About Serpentine Sam

Co-founder of the League of Nations, key contributor to the UN Charter and the UDHR, and one-time husband of a former Miss World Venezuela, “Serpentine Sam” is a man of the ages and a man for all seasons.

 

Lost to history by his own design, from late 1948 Sam spent several decades cryogenically frozen until next needed by the international community. That call came late on the evening of 18 June 2007 when, at the nod of Human Rights Council President Ambassador L.A. de Alba, Sam was thawed out to stitch-up the Council’s “institution-building package”. Having sealed the deal, Sam high-fived the then-HC, was bestowed the venerable title “Don Sam” by de Alba, ate like a horse, changed safari suits, and spent the rest of the night partying (like it was 1949) with the Mariachis sent prematurely on their way after having belted out only one lonesome canción earlier that evening.[1]

 

En secret consultant and advisor to all of the Council’s groups and blocs, hotlined to the UN’s upper-echelons, and in bed with all of the major non-governmental human rights players, Sam has taken the selfless decision to channel his encyclopaedic knowledge and unrivalled insights into a single forum – this blog. Its purpose: to nurture discussion and debate outside the plenary – to tackle the hard, pressing issues – to turn a sharp, critical eye to the ridiculousness and absurdity that so often envelops and inhibits efforts to defend and advance human rights – and, foremost, to hear your views.

 

For reasons obvious, Sam’s full identity cannot be disclosed.

 

[1] The exact reason why the Mariachis played only one song and the identity of the person who instructed them to leave continues to be debated by historians.