The UN Human Rights Council contains members like China, Cuba, and Qatar – states criticized for systemic abuses. Yet citizens of Western democracies still view the UN as a highly trusted institution. That’s the paradox: nations accused of violating rights are the ones charged with setting global human rights standards.
What should the public know about what really happens inside the UN? And how can Western democracies confront the organization’s shortcomings?
To examine major concerns about the UN, Hillel Neuer joins Inside Policy Talks. Neuer is a lawyer, writer, and activist, and the executive director of UN Watch, a human rights NGO based in Geneva, Switzerland. Neuer testified several times before the United Nations and is a widely cited expert on its deficiencies and contradictions.
On the podcast, he tells Casey Babb, director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Promised Land project, that public opinion surveys continuing to demonstrate widespread public confidence in the UN amongst those living in Western democracies. He says that means what happens at the UN matters “whether we like it or not.”
“What’s said at the UN influences the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of people,” says Neuer.
That’s why he’s focused on turning a mirror on some of the UN’s worst human rights abusers, while highlighting the hypocrisy of the body’s treatment of Israel: It “turns a blind eye to human rights abuses happening in China,” he points out, while making Israel a “scapegoat for everything they’re not doing on catastrophes around the world.” He says Canada and its Western allies must use their “moral gravitas” to challenge this moral imbalance at the UN.
