The following article has been published in J‑Wire with comments by ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim.

The votes are in for the Forty-third session of the UN Human Rights Council which sat between 24 February and 20 March 2020.

Australia voted against the following res­ol­u­tions with a sole partner in three of the four res­ol­u­tions below,

The United States has boycotted the UNHRC for the last two years.

The co-CEO of The Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry Peter Wertheim commented: “The UN Human Rights Council has surpassed its dis­cred­ited and disbanded pre­de­cessor, the UN Com­mis­sion on Human Rights, in its hypocrisy.  It has allowed countries with some of the worst human rights records in the world to sit in judgment of countries with far superior records, including Israel, the only genuine rule-of-law democracy in the Middle East.  Instead of ful­filling its intended purpose as a beacon of human rights, it has made a hollow mockery of that sacred cause with its cynical, polit­ic­ally motivated agenda, most espe­cially its notorious Item 7 con­cern­ing Israel.

Since its creation in 2006, the Council has passed more res­ol­u­tions con­demning Israel than the rest of the world combined.   Countries with poor human rights records that have served on the UNHRC include Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia, all of which have been given a free pass, in stark contrast to the Council’s obsessive focus on Israel.

The Aus­trali­an gov­ern­ment is to be highly commended for con­sist­ently voting against these res­ol­u­tions, and for exposing the bias and punc­tur­ing the hypocrisy which motivates them.   In fact, it has been Australia, this year joined by Germany, which has insisted on bringing these res­ol­u­tions to a vote so that they cannot simply be waved though as consensus res­ol­u­tions.  We thank Australia and other demo­crat­ic countries which continue to insist that principle, not politics, should govern the Council’s agenda.”

Res­ol­u­tion: Human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan   

“The Council is deeply concerned at the suffering of the Syrian citizens in the occupied Syrian Golan due to the sys­tem­at­ic and con­tinu­ous violation of their fun­da­ment­al and human rights by Israel since the Israeli military occu­pa­tion of 1967,

The Council decides to continue the con­sid­er­a­tion of the human rights viol­a­tions in the occupied Syrian Golan at its forty-sixth session”

Israeli set­tle­ments in the Occupied Palestini­an Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan

The res­ol­u­tion covers concerns of the security wall, the set­tle­ments, aggres­sion of settlers, etc. Full text