That's not a topic I'm overly familiar with either, but I do have somewhere a discussion between me and Lawrence, in 2001, about how the UN Conference on Racism was turning out (for about the sixth time) to be entirely about Israel. Israel and the U.S. withdrew, and Kofi Annan compared the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi treatment of the Jews, at which point the foreign minister of Germany told him that they weren't the same at all and he shouldn't dare make the comparison.
The U.S. also got kicked off the Human Rights Commission and replaced with Sudan, which still practices race-based slavery. We certainly have plenty of our own failings, but I feel pretty safe saying there's a substantive difference. It tends to support my sense that there's a lot more politicking going on on those levels than actual interest in anybody's rights. (This is not to say that there aren't arms of the UN that do great things -- but not necessarily in that sphere.)
no subject
The U.S. also got kicked off the Human Rights Commission and replaced with Sudan, which still practices race-based slavery. We certainly have plenty of our own failings, but I feel pretty safe saying there's a substantive difference. It tends to support my sense that there's a lot more politicking going on on those levels than actual interest in anybody's rights. (This is not to say that there aren't arms of the UN that do great things -- but not necessarily in that sphere.)