UN appointing Saudi official to top human rights job is inhuman

In a decision taken a few months ago that is only now being reported by the world media, it transpires that an influential committee of the United Nations Human Rights Council will be headed by a representative from Saudi Arabia.

Faisal bin Hassan Trad, the Saudi ambassador to the UN in Geneva, will chair the "Consultative Group to the President of the Human Rights Council relating to the vacancies of special procedures mandate holders".

This needs translating: The term "special procedures" refers to the practice of having "independent human rights experts with mandates to report and advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective. The system of Special Procedures is a central element of the United Nations human rights machinery and covers all human rights: civil, cultural, economic, political and social."

The "experts" referred to are eminent legal luminaries and academics from different parts of the world who are mandated to visit various countries to enquire into the specific issues such as the human rights of children, women, indigenous peoples, workers, religious minorities or abuses such as torture, disappearances (of dissidents, human rights activists or opposition workers), human trafficking and so forth.Their visits and subsequent reports - usually of the damning sort - shed light on lacunae and recommend reforms.

For instance, when the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Christof Heyns visited India in 2012, it created quite a stir. It is another matter that the previous and current regimes in India have ignored his recommendations made in 2013, including that India should ratify the Convention Against Torture, join the International Criminal Court and repeal or radically amend the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. When Heyns's predecessor Philip Alston visited the Philippines in 2007, it not only received wide coverage in the country and internationally but led a few years later to the official adoption of some measures to curb rampant impunity. In 2013, Rashida Manjoo, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, undertook a mission to India, met a large number of stakeholders and issued a detailed set of recommendations which New Delhi has taken hardly any notice of.

Nevertheless, the reports of the Special Rapporteurs expose human rights abuses in various countries including rich developed ones. Rapporteurs looking into the rights of indigenous peoples, housing rights and right to education among others have visited the United States and issued critical reports.

Thus the role of the Special Rapporteurs in raising concerns globally over human rights violations wherever they may be taking place should not be discounted. Thus far, the academics and jurists chosen for these mandates have been highly competent people committed to the promotion of human rights.

Which is why electing a Saudi diplomat to head a panel overseeing their selection raises questions. The kingdom is notorious for human rights abuses, half of whose population, namely women, have few rights and whose employers of foreign workers and particularly female domestic workers from South and East Asia treat them as chattel and worse. Saudi Arabia carries out gruesome capital punishment - such as amputation of limbs of convicts - pronounced by its medieval courts. Recourse to the death penalty is rife, something which Faisal Trad defends? In fact, Saudi Arabia, along with China and Iran, carries out large numbers of executions and recently posted a job advertisement for eight new executioners. Imprisoned Saudi pro-democracy blogger Raif Badawi has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes.

According to one report, the chairmanship of the panel was handed to the Saudi diplomat as a consolation after the kingdom was denied the chair of the whole 47-country Human Rights Council. The other current members of the panel headed by the Saudi diplomat are from Algeria, Chile, Greece and Lithuania. One can only hope that they bring positive pressure to bear so that future special rapporteurs continue to be upright individuals and that their mandates to examine the human rights situation around the globe are not compromised. There are enough assaults on human rights without structures that have been set up with great difficulty to defend them being subject to internal haemorrhage.