Where international affairs are concerned consensus in Caricom is hard to come by. There was the regional body last week restating its commitment to co-ordinating foreign policy, and then on the following day all good intentions were forgotten and it split right down the middle on an issue of some consequence. As a result half the members exercised their vote at the General Assembly of the United Nations one way, and half another.
The vote in question related to a resolution to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council over its violation of human rights in Ukraine. It was the discovery of the mass killings and the torture of civilians in the town of Bucha following the withdrawal of the Russians which appear to have galvanised the Americans into moving to suspend the Russian Federation from the Council.
It has to be acknowledged that the current composition of the 47-member Human Rights Council includes, and has always included, states with very dubious human rights credentials. The present complement includes China and Cuba, for example, to name but two. It is a reflection of the fact that there is no universal acceptance across the globe of what constitutes human rights; western democratic liberal values do not correspond to those of a whole range of states which fall more or less under the shadow of autocracy. As such one is bound to ponder on whether as presently constituted the Council can really fully serve the purpose for which it was intended.
It might be noted too that Russia has a brutal track record in terms of human rights in Chechnya, Syria and Georgia; Ukraine is not its first excursion into savagery and ruthless killings. Despite this history it still was elected as one of 15 countries to serve a three-year stint on the Council by the General Assembly in 2021. The Human Rights Council was first set up in 2006, but prior to that Russia was a signatory to the Geneva Convention, among other international instruments, although it has not operated as if it were constrained by any of them.
The Council can suspend a country from membership on a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly if it commits gross and systematic violations of human rights. Russia is not the first nation to be suspended; Libya was too in 2011 following Col Gaddafi’s violent repression of protests. For all of that, no one has taken on China for its repression of its Uighur population, for example, no doubt because (among other reasons) it would probably be impossible to secure a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly, given that country’s power and influence. Not surprisingly, China voted against last week’s resolution, on the grounds it would set a “new dangerous precedent.”
As for Russia, Reuters had reported that Mos-cow had warned countries a yes vote or abstention would be viewed as an “unfriendly gesture” with consequences for bilateral ties.
The debate in the Chamber washed over the Caricom representatives, since they had already been told by their principals how to vote. Seven of them were among the 93 who voted in favour of the resolution, seven were included among the 58 who abstained, while none was counted among the 24 who opposed it. One might have thought that all the members of Caricom, or at least most of them, would have been in favour, although the underlying reasons for some of the abstentions might not have been what was publicly declared.
Guyana was among those which abstained, and one could only muse about whether it was in some way connected with the Russian warning to those who did not oppose the resolution, considering that in February it was reported that executives of Rusal would be coming to Guyana to discuss the resumption of operations here. It has to be said, however, that although the founder of Rusal, Oleg Deripaska is under sanctions, he has not headed the company since 2018, in addition to which the company itself has not been sanctioned.
It might be remarked too that Rusal has called for an investigation into the killing of civilians in Bucha, Chairman Bernard Zonneveld being reported as saying that the accounts of atrocities there had shocked the company. In any case, since the Russian warning was directed at those who abstained as well as those who voted in favour, it is difficult to see how Guyana would gain any advantage from being timorous.
What President Irfaan Ali had to say yesterday on the matter was that this country was waiting on the outcome of UN investigations. “We stand solidly with the rest of the world in condemning the war and in asking Russia to go back to diplomacy and in having this war brought to an end,” he was quoted as saying. After confirming that the matter was discussed by the Caricom Heads, he went on to say, “There are two things that are happening: the UN has launched a process of doing the investigation to come up with the factual basis on what is happening in terms of human rights violations and what we have said once the report comes out, then the findings of that report must be respected and supported.”
“This is something that came up very quickly. You would appreciate that. It is weighty decisions. Once that report comes [we will decide],” the President responded in answer to a question on the matter.
It didn’t come up so quickly that some of those bureaucratic Caricom Heads needed more time to find out what was going on. Even before we arrived at Bucha and other towns outside Kyiv whose buildings and populations had been ravaged by the invasion, there were any number of other examples, not the least of which was Mariupol. There were the distressing witness testimonies of those who had escaped, the satellite images from private satellites of the enormity of the destruction, the reports of the Red Cross and other volunteer agencies of the deprivation in the city, the targeting of those trying to escape, the indiscriminate bombing of a maternity hospital and a theatre where so many children and others were sheltering, and so on and so on.
Do the President and his advisors never switch on the TV to watch channels which have some credibility, or do they have access only to Moscow propaganda? And if our head of state doesn’t watch TV, there are any number of reputable newspapers and agencies which have reporters on the ground whose first-hand accounts he can read. What more proof does he need? If we all have to wait for a UN report, which inevitably will take time because of the processes which are involved, this government might never pronounce on the matter of human rights violations in Ukraine.
President Ali has done this nation no credit by voting with Barbados, Belize, St Kitts-Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname to abstain. He should have been in the same camp as Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica and St Lucia; they were the ones on the high moral ground. If the government is serious about pressurising Russia to bring this war to an end, then suspending it from the Human Rights Council is one of the weapons in the armoury. Such a suspension will humiliate it, and convey the message that its capacity for leverage in the international arena is seriously imperilled. It is important for it to recognise it is isolated in terms of the world’s major institutions, and that its atrocities do have consequences.
If this government is genuinely opposed to the invasion of Ukraine, it has to stop giving red-tape excuses, and not just talk the talk, but vote the vote.
