Today is human rights day, and down at Comment is Free Peter Tatchell is commending the idea of a Global Human Rights Index.
There is... [he writes] no objective, transparent measure to determine a country's conformity to, or departure from, human rights norms.
These deficiencies need to be addressed if the international community is to secure human rights progress. We need benchmarks against which all countries can be measured, without fear or favour. There is no easy way to ensure that the principles of the UDHR [Universal Declaration of Human Rights] are upheld by UN member states but the power of publicity and moral leverage should not be underestimated. Even tyrannies are conscious of their image and seek to avoid opprobrium.
The index, he adds, would be 'a means of measuring and ranking human rights abuses, country by country'; it would aim to 'create a human rights league table to pressure governments to clean up their record'.
I think it's a creative proposal. But in the form proposed by Peter (and the Green Party) it has an apparent flaw. Such an index will only be of any use if it is considered to be authoritative, and for this to happen the neutrality and objectivity of the body overseeing it has to be very widely accepted. In Peter's own phrase: 'without fear or favour'. So to whom is the task to be entrusted? To the UN, no less. As an organization the UN is a very good idea. However, to date and just exactly in the domain of overseeing human rights, its record has not been entirely reassuring. The UN Human Rights Council and its predecessor body, the UN Human Rights Commission, have included amongst their number contries like Zimbabwe, China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Cuba. Peter writes...
... the unfair or excessive demonisation of a particular country will be less easy to accomplish if the index can show that it is not the worst offending state or if the index can demonstrate that the accusing states also have a less than exemplary human rights record.
It is well-known that the Human Rights Council and its predecessor have been guilty of one such 'excessive' focus. Does this proposal contain what it needs to in order to ensure that the UN's hosting of the index would not be subject to political dealing, political influences and political pressure? If not, it will be worth little. A global human rights index needs to be supported by a body with quasi-judicial independence.