Maria Otero
Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs 

Opening Session

Geneva, Switzerland

March 1, 2010

Thank you, Mr. President. It is a pleasure to be here with all of you today.

When we ran for election to the Human Rights Council in 2009, we did so out of a renewed commitment to the Council, to the United Nations, and to the defense of human rights and human dignity around the globe. At the September plenary session of the HRC, we made clear that three tenets guide our participation: a commitment to principled engagement; consistent application of international human rights law; and a fidelity to the truth.

By principled engagement, we mean we will support what the Council does well, and we want to work constructively on aspects where we see the need for fundamental change. We seek to build partnerships that transcend traditional geographic groupings and that are based on an appreciation of shared responsibilities to the world community.

The second tenet is a dedication to apply consistently international human rights law to all countries in the world, including ourselves. We seek to lead by example, by meeting our own obligations under both domestic and international law. This November we will report to the Council through the Universal Periodic Review. We are engaging in several months of consultations throughout the United States to hear what civil society and community leaders have to say about the USG human rights record. We will be considering the outcomes of these consultations in developing our report to the HRC and in considering what needs to and can change with respect to our record.

The third tenet is fidelity to the truth. We will not hesitate to challenge resolutions and other actions that we believe undermine the effectiveness of the Council and its mandate. One aspect of the Council’s mandate is to gather information on human rights conditions around the world and to make that information publicly available. We are determined to support special procedures and country mandates which advance that mandate. We are concerned about efforts by some Council members to eliminate or weaken country mandates. The Council’s approach to country specific mandates must be objective, unbiased, and applied consistently.

This is our policy — the expectations we have set for ourselves. We will promote these same expectations for the Human Rights Council and for the current session.

Turning to the topic of the review of the Council, first, we believe the Council should promote and develop measures that truly help the human rights situation on the ground for real people in a timely fashion. This means the HRC must collect human rights information. It is important that the Special Rapporteurs, for example, remain independent, that they have proper resources, and that they are allowed to conduct visits.

Second, the Council must assess the information properly, which in turn means that Council Members should not attempt to curtail the independence of the messengers, politicize the debate on human rights situations, or minimize human rights problems.

Finally, the HRC must act after it reviews this information. Sometimes such action will take the form of focusing a spotlight on severe situations; sometimes the appropriate action will take the form of providing technical assistance to a country that is willing to improve its record or financial resources to assist them in building the capacity to undertake needed reforms. As the High Commissioner has said on multiple occasions, the Council needs to find flexible, creative, and effective ways to address specific situations wherever they occur. These three principles will guide our approach for the 2011 review.

We will be working with all Council members and observers to meet the numerous challenges and opportunities presented in the current session. One of these is addressing the real problem of religious intolerance and discrimination and the negative impact that such discrimination has on individuals’ lives. We are seriously concerned about inflammatory speech and language that reinforces negative stereotypes of individuals based on their religion. These are issues that need to be addressed in practical and effective ways. But we do not support the concept of “defamation of religions,” that has been proposed here. We also do not endorse calls to criminalize and ban speech that is offensive to members of religious traditions. We strongly believe that censoring offensive ideas cannot and will not prevent racism or religious discrimination.

What we do support is efforts by states to take practical steps to address discrimination, intolerance, and hateful acts. In October, during a meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards, we presented an action-oriented approach that includes efforts to support implementation of anti-discrimination laws, enactment and enforcement of hate crimes laws, governmental outreach to members of minority groups, ensuring that members of minorities have a voice in public discourse, and greater human rights education and inter-faith activities. We are committed to this approach and believe that it represents a useful and productive way forward in addressing our shared concerns about discrimination and intolerance without infringing on freedom of expression or freedom of religion. We will continue to discuss and advocate for this alternative approach at the upcoming session and urge other states to work with us in this effort.

We also continue to have concerns about disproportionate attention the Council pays to Israel, which is the only country that has its own agenda item. And while we have a series of specific concerns about the Goldstone report, which we have outlined in the past, we will continue to call upon all of the parties to conduct serious reviews of the allegations in that report and to establish credible accountability systems. The Government of Israel has initiated an investigation and review of the allegations in the Goldstone Report as well as other complaints arising out of the Gaza conflict of 2008/2009 and has detailed the first phase of its domestic investigations process to the UN Secretary General. The Palestinian Authority also has recently set up an Independent Investigation Commission to follow up on implementation of the recommendations made in the Goldstone Report. We support the notion of complementarity, which assumes that the best way to address these issues is for each party to conduct its own investigations and to carry out its own remedial actions. Ultimately, the United States is committed to working with the parties to bring about a comprehensive peace in the region, including two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. This will be best way to ensure a long term protection of human rights for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Of course, human rights challenges reach well beyond the border of Palestine and Israel. We believe the Council could and should play a helpful role in accompanying Guinea through its current transition, by focusing on opportunities for technical assistance and safeguards to strengthen the new government’s ability to promote and protect human rights. We also remain deeply concerned about the lack of capacity to prosecute human rights abusers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), particularly in the military. We look forward to hearing the report from the seven thematic rapporteurs and the High Commissioner on Human Rights at this session. At this March session, the mandates for the DPRK and Burma, among others, will be up for renewal and the United States will strongly support their renewal. The human rights situation in both of these countries remains very poor. The HRC resolutions are not exhaustive but serve to highlight areas of particular concern and call on the mandated governments to address the issues raised. They also authorize special rapporteurs for human rights for each of those nations. The DPRK has refused to allow the Special Rapporteur for human rights to visit. Given the DPRK’s engagement with the Universal Periodic Review process earlier this year, we hope the DPRK government will end its refusal to engage with the Special Rapporteur. We again urge the Council to maintain its focus on these countries by renewing these mandates.

The goals I have outlined here for the March session and beyond are ambitious in many ways but they correspond to the very reason the Human Rights Council was established: to strengthen the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe. Our expectations should be nothing less and the United States will continue to strongly advocate that the Council meet these expectations.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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Message: 2
From: U.S. Department of State < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 14:35:19 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Democracy, Human Rights, Refugees: Press Briefing Following Address to UN Human Rights Council

Democracy, Human Rights, Refugees: Press Briefing Following Address to UN Human Rights Council
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:13:31 -0600

Press Briefing Following Address to UN Human Rights Council

Maria Otero
Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs 

Geneva, Switzerland

March 1, 2010

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: Thank you very much. I’m very pleased to be able to have had the opportunity to address the Council and to discuss some of the priorities that the United States has for this Council, and to be able to reiterate the importance that we give to promoting and helping the Council operate in a more effective way, in a way that is based and rooted on human rights principles and focuses on those places and the needs to be able to address abuses where they happen.

As you know, the United States is new to the Council, but clearly we’re not new to the struggle of universal human rights. I think our effort in the Council is to not only participate but to also be able to have our voice be heard clearly on some of the issues that we consider crucial. Clearly, we understand that the way the United States can lead is initially by example, and we don’t have, as President Obama has often said, a perfect human rights record. We are not exempt from the standards that we are asking the Human Rights Council to set forth for all countries, and that we’re trying to defend here in Geneva.

We’ll be looking and addressing this more as we conduct our own universal periodic review which, as you know, is part of the process that’s going on for every country. We’ve already started consultations with civil society inside the United States, speaking with a wide variety of different groups, different American citizens, to address the questions of human rights in the United States. So we are in the process right now of listening, of taking note, of incorporating those ideas as we present our own UPR as part of this work.

We do think that this is the type of model that would serve countries well. The idea, as countries prepare their own universal periodic reviews, that they also take similar efforts to record the concerns of their own people, to record what their own civil societies are discussing.

These concerns, these voices, these are the sorts of things that I think the Council needs to be able to address and I think we’ve fallen short of adequate, and that’s one of the goals that we would like to be able to see advance.

I would just put the four things that we think are enormously important as we move forward and that we will be pushing for.

The first one is strong and unbiased country mandates. The second one is an end to the disproportionate attention to Israel. A third one is independent special raporteurs who can operate with not only independence but with access to information. And then a thoughtful and a thorough planning of the 2011 Human Rights Council review process. These are some of the things that we will be taking on and moving forward. I think I would just put those words on to give you a sense of how we’re addressing this.

QUESTION: Elaine Anglo with the Associated Press. The question is about the elections of new members to the Human Rights Council in May. Among the countries running for a seat on the Council are Iran and Libya. I’m wondering how do you see their running for the seats? And can the U.S. imagine sitting on the same Council as those two countries that are known for widespread human rights abuses?

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: I think we need to go back to the principles as we’re looking at this question and as we begin to consider any country we need to look very carefully at their human rights records and at the way in which they are carrying out their own response to human rights abuses in their own countries. So I think that’s a way to address that question. I think that has to be front and center in the way that we approach it.

QUESTION: Pamela Taylor, [Afosud]. I’m surprised in the four things you listed you didn’t mention freedom of expression. Isn’t that a primary concern also to the United States, especially at this session where it’s going to come up again?

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: Absolutely. I think the areas that I mentioned are the sort of action areas. But if we really go back to the way in which we are framing everything that we do in the Human Rights Council, freedom of expression is really at the core of it. I think when we look at our work in the Council or anywhere else we really go back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights where the freedoms that prevail in that underlie the work that we do anywhere, so freedom from expression is clearly one of the most important ways in which our engagement will be manifested, whether we’re talking about religious intolerance or any other issue.

QUESTION: Can I follow up on that? Doesn’t the U.S. Constitution and the way it has an absolute interpretation of what freedom of expression means make your task more difficult when you deal with even European countries? Let alone other nations who want to see hate speech banned, for example?

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: I think we absolutely firmly maintain the concept of freedom of expression as it’s manifested, both in our Constitution and in all the work that we do.

We do believe that in order to move forward in addressing issues, for example religious intolerance, we don’t need to attack freedom of expression in order to do it. There are many other ways in which we can put that forth and clearly some of the ways in which we are suggesting that countries enact anti-discrimination laws, that they carry out specific activities that could engage people of different religions to interact together, that they be able to provide a series of different ways of addressing the issue, means that you don’t need to restrain or restrict freedom of expression.

QUESTION: Jamil Shadistad, Sao Paulo, Brazil. One of the things Madame Pelai said this morning was that basically the Council suffers a problem of friends supporting each other and not dealing with the actual issue. The violation of human rights.

We have seen in the last couple of weeks Latin America and Brazil supporting first Iran and then Cuba now in the latest incident that happened there. How do you see the region regarding this pattern of behavior?

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: I would say that one of the, as I mentioned in the speech this morning, one of the important ways in which we are addressing our work is to really work constructively in all the areas of change that are needed, and part of what we are looking for is really seeking partnerships in this work that transcend the traditional geographic groupings, or that transcend the sub-groupings that can take place in the Council.

Our effort is really to apply consistently the international human rights law and to apply it to all countries. So I think that’s the message behind the way that we’re trying to work and to operate. So the idea that all countries from one region should work together is in fact something that we’re trying to expand so that we can move in full partnerships beyond that.

QUESTION: In this regard, for example, the position of Brazil in Iran and Brazil in regard to Cuba, how is that seen by the U.S. administration?

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: I don’t think that we can really tell countries how to operate and how to move forward, but what we do think is important is that all of the work that we do, be able to be done in a way that holds up the principles behind the Human Rights Council, and certainly the principles that we believe are so important. The concept of principled engagement which is really what underlies the work that we do. The application of international human rights law to everyone and to every country without exception. And then fidelity to the truth. These are the three tenets, if you will, that underlie our work. And that is really the way that I think we will approach everything that we are doing.

QUESTION: Gordon Martin, Vatican Radio. Madame Secretary, you’ve just given a very diplomatic answer about Iran, but could I push you a little further, because your seat will be occupied in just over an hour by the Iranian Foreign Minister who is going to tell us –

VOICE: We’re aware of that fact. [Laughter].

QUESTION: Who is going to tell us that Iran is being discriminated against. But does the United States intend to take a stronger position about Iran? It’s to many people shocking that a country with that reputation should be anywhere near the Council. And will you be using the weapon of threatened sanctions in this context? Thank you.

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: I certainly think that it’s very important for the Council to be able to keep a focus on the human rights abuses that are taking place in Iran, and to be able to make sure that that focus is maintained and addressed.

There are a variety of different ways to respond to it, and I don’t think that it’s important at this point to lay out specifically, we should do it this way or that way. What is more important is for the Human Rights Council to be able to address, to be able to put the spotlight on these issues and to maintain them front and center as abuses that are being carried out in a country which is precisely what the Human Rights Council should be addressing.

QUESTION: Shaptai Gold, German Press Agency. I just wanted to ask you, you mentioned this issue about disproportionate attention to Israel. Can you define what would be appropriate attention to the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories given the administration doesn’t seem to be giving much attention to the issue?

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: What we think is important is that the majority of the resolutions that come out of the Council and resolutions that come out in every session have to do with Israel. Israel is always an agenda item. And while we believe that it’s very important to be able to have country mandates and that we should be able to address different country issues, we should be able to do that as a Council according to the human rights abuses that the Council observes and needs to undertake. So with Israel it’s really developing a greater perspective and ensuring that it doesn’t dominate to the degree that it does the undertakings, the proceedings as well as the resolutions.

QUESTION: If I can just follow up, given that the issue is going to be discussed in this Council session. Does the United States believe that there are serious human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories? Or is this something that simply should be removed entirely from the Council’s agenda in your opinion?

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: No. Absolutely -- What we are seeing really emerging right now is what we would propose we enable to continue is both the Israel and the Palestinians taking on their own individual internal reviews and reviews of the allegations that have been made in the Goldstone Report. And as you know, Israel has already put forth a report. The Palestinians have created an independent commission. Clearly, the abuses that have or may have taken place have to be addressed, and the best way to do that is for the countries to take those on and to give them attention and to be able to carry those out.

So that is in the process of being developed right now. From our perspective the Human Rights Council should support that effort and move it forward rather than truncate it or minimize it by developing its own position that doesn’t take that into consideration.

QUESTION: Anakrit Matrinoya, Turkish Zeitung. Will you meet Mr. Mataki here in Geneva also for bilateral talks? And if yes, what will be the issues? Thank you.

VOICE: I had a hard time understanding your question. Could you repeat it, maybe a little slower and a little louder?

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: We couldn’t hear so well.

QUESTION: I’m sorry. My name is Anakrit Matrinoya with NeuTurkish Zeitung. I was wondering if you will meet Mr. Mataki here in Geneva for bilateral talks? And if yes, what will be the issues?

UNDER SECRETARY OTERO: No, I will not be meeting with him. Thank you very much.

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