The UN Human Rights Council is on the world spotlight as civil society and some states await its action on ongoing political situation in Burma. Calls for concrete resolutions from the Council have been demanded by Asia-Pacific human rights organisations.

More than 200 human rights organisations and nongovernment organisations from the Asia-Pacific region signed a petition, sent on September 30, that calls for all Asian governments, especially those who are members of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council, to take actions regarding the ongoing situation in Burma. In particular, the petition urges the Asian governments to adopt an action-oriented resolution to establish:

(1) A fact finding mission to be led by the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Myanmar, Mr. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro to investigate the human rights violations committed by Burma’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in response to peaceful demonstrations; and

(2) An independent monitoring team to monitor the implementation of the recommendations of the fact finding mission and to assess the broader human rights situation within Burma.

Human Rights Council's response

On October 2, 2007, the UN Human Rights Council held a special session on Burma. The Council calls on the authorities to release without delay all those recently arrested as well as all political detainees, including Burma's democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate who has been under house arrest for over 11 years.

Human Rights Council president, Romanian Ambassador Doru Romulus Costea, lauded the fact that the emergency session overcame the risk of disagreements among the Council’s 47 members and ended with a consensus decision.

Sébastien Gillioz, UN advocacy coordinator for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, however noted that the resolution released by the Council would not guarantee that the government of Burma will cooperate, especially after its decades of non-cooperation.

An activist who refused to be identified said, “It is the responsibility of every member of this Council to make sure that the situation doesn’t deteriorate further and that this resolution gets implemented,” adding that neighbouring countries and other countries in Asia shared a special responsibility for getting Burma to cooperate with the Human Rights Council.

Resolution needs more “teeth”

Expressing disappointment, Ambassador Swashpawan Singh said that India had “advocated an outcome that was forward-looking, non-condemnatory, and sought to involve the authorities in Myanmar in a peaceful outcome, and regretted that the text adopted was not in line with this approach” and that “it did not engage constructively with the authorities in Myanmar.”

Similarly, the Russian Federation also expressed dissatisfaction with certain parts of the text, saying “it did not assess the problems sufficiently and was unbalanced in nature. The resolution should not be a condemnation of the government, but an encouragement for it to follow the path of democratisation," said Ambassador Anton Vasiliev.

“The world is watching and while the time for mere words has passed, decisive action is now needed. No state can condone such actions,” said UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro.

Sources:
“Burma: Human Rights Council Must Act” from Article19, posted on October 2, 2007, <http://www.article19.org/pdfs/press/burma-unhr-pr.pdf>.
“UN Council Deplores Repression of Protests in Burma” from Inter Press Service, posted on October 2, 2007, <http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39501>.
“UN Human Rights Council calls on Myanmar to release detainees, political prisoners” from UN News Centre, posted on October 2, 2007, <http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=24124&Cr=myanmar&Cr1>.
“Urgent appeal for action at the UN Human Rights Council on Burma” from choike.org, posted on October 1, 2007, <http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/5940.html>.