By IANS
Pretoria : South Africa has rejected the UN Watch report that ranked its human rights record as one of the worst in the world, South African news agency BuaNews reported Tuesday.
In response, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) was adamant that the promotion and protection of human rights remains one of the pillars of South Africa’s foreign policy.
According to newspaper reports, UN Watch ranked South Africa’s human rights record alongside those of China, Russia, Pakistan, Algeria and Saudi Arabia.
The department called the report blatantly lopsided, because it creates the impression that the international community is only concerned about civil and political rights.
While many western countries and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are only concerned about civil and political rights, South Africa and many other countries are concerned about all human rights — civil, political, social and economic, according to DFA spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa.
He said South Africa’s protection of human rights is an approach derived from the constitution and the bill of rights.
“We express this practically in both our bilateral and multilateral engagements. Bilaterally we engage directly with countries and express our concerns where we feel that human rights are being violated,” he said.
In the multilateral arena, South Africa has been among the leading countries behind the reform and strengthening of the UN’s human rights machinery.
As a manifestation of this, said Mamoepa, South Africa chaired the negotiations that led to the creation of the new UN Human Rights Council.
“We supported the creation of the Human Rights Council because we saw it as a body with the potential to re-energise the UN’s human rights machinery and improve its credibility.
“The UN’s human rights machinery, over the years, lost its credibility due to the problems of double standards, selectivity and politicisation.
“By double standards, we mean that it only addressed itself with human rights problems in some countries and not in others,” he stated.
Mamoepa explained that historically, the UN resolutions on human rights have targeted mainly the developing countries, adding that no resolutions are ever brought and passed to address human rights situations in developed countries or global human rights problems created by developed countries.
This is a fact that organisations such as UN Watch, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International know too well.
“Because of this, a mockery is made of human rights with the impression created that certain human rights violations are tolerable because they are committed in some countries,” he said.
Had the UN Watch rankings been based on a holistic and comprehensive assessment of country positions, based on all the agenda items of the Human Rights Council, South Africa would have way better than many other countries, he held.
“It should be recalled that UN Watch is one organisation that is actively campaigning to undermine a key South African initiative at the global level, the World Conference Against Racism,” Mamoepa said.