Egypt diplomat says UN rights council became more politicized

Egypt's assistant foreign minister of human rights, social and humanitarian affairs Laila Bahaa Eddin criticized the performance of the UN Human Rights Council.

"A quick glance in the world showed that despite all the efforts of the Human Rights Council, the world was far from achieving its human rights goals," she told a meeting of the council.

"In the face of daily violations of human rights, the Human Rights Council had become more politicized and less sensitive to the respect for diversity. This had weakened its capacity to deal with international issues. Despite this, the Universal Periodic Review was one of the most important and most efficient mechanisms," she said.

Egypt gave great importance to the activities of the Human Rights Council according to its mandate and the various topics covered by its meetings, she added.

Since the revolution of January 25, 2011, Egypt sought to give priority to the revolution’s slogans of freedom, justice, and dignity, and promoted the principles of citizenship, non-discrimination, and non-marginalization, said the senior diplomat.

"The Constitution adopted in 2014 had been endorsed by a vast majority of Egyptians and embraced human rights. Terrorism had negative effects on society and its sources had to be eradicated," Bahaa Eddin said.

"Egypt warned of groups that used violence to achieve their goals and encouraged countries to refrain from providing a safe haven to these groups. Some countries condemned terrorist groups on one hand but financed them on the other hand."

"Egypt called for the necessity to increase international cooperation to face the challenge of terrorism."

As for the Syrian crisis, she said "the Syrian tragedy had induced over four million Syrian refugees to flee to regional countries which had no means to accept them, leading to many negative scenarios such as racism, xenophobia and stereotyping."

She reiterated Egypt's stance that calls on countries that had means to assist in this situation to do so. 

"Despite economic difficulties, Egypt hosted half a million Syrian refugees," she said.

As for the Palestinian cause, she said "the world could not speak of human rights without speaking of Palestinians who lived in violation of human rights in their own country," she said.

"Egypt gave importance to fighting all discrimination based on religious origin and belief which had increased with the latest migration trends.

Source: MENA