UN Watch

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UN Watch is a Geneva-based group lobbying group set up by American Jewish Committee (AJC). Its main aim is to pressure Geneva-based United Nations organizations to stop their critical stance on Israeli activities. For this purpose, UN Watch forms coalitions with various other NGOs who in turn will be helped with their causes as long as they support UN Watch's aim to undermine the UN Human UN Human Rights Council. UN Watch champions causes like Darfur and Burma, but these have to do with (1) allaying the impression that UN Watch is a single-issue organization and (2) with "pointing the finger elsewhere" and making the argument of why "single out Israel" it worse crimes are occuring in Darfur, etc.

Activities

  • Monitor UN activities, resolutions, or official statements.
  • Lobby to change declarations or resolutions pertaining Israel.
  • Forming coalitions with non-governmental organizations to leverage their collective influence at the UN. It mostly operates with CONGO which aims to create just such pressure groups.

History

UN Watch was established in 1993 under the chairmanship of Morris Abram, a pioneer leader in the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King, Jr., president of the United Negro College Fund, and Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Natinos in Geneva. ITs borad includes leading human rights scholars and statesmen.

UN Watch is an accredited non-governmental organization that monitors the performance of the United Nations according to the yardstick of its own Charter. Areas of concern include strengthening the role of democracies within the UN and ensuring the equal treatment by the UN of its member states. At the United Nations, UN Watch has been at the forefront in the fight against anti-Semitism and against the UN’s discriminatory treatment of Israel.[1]

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UN Watch

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the following about UN Watch:

"I deeply appreciate the valuable work performed by UN Watch. I believe that informed and independent evaluation of the United Nations' activities will prove a vital source as we seek to adapt the Organization to the needs of a changing world. I can promise you that I will pay close attention to your observations and view in the years ahead."

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UN Watch campaigns

UN Watch cooperates with non-governmental organizations around the world in order to protect and promote the principles of the UN Charter. In 2004 UN Watch intervened on behalf of victims of torture and censorship in Cote d'Ivoire, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Nepal, Myanmar, and Pakistan. [2] UN Watch also spoke out for the Lebanese victims of Syrian political assasinations. [3]

Darfur

UN Watch is among the leading advocates at the United Nations for human rights victims in Darfur. [4][5] UN Watch chaired the NGO Activist Summit For Darfur in 2007. [6] UN Watch challenged Sudan in 2007 for its rejection of human rights experts in Darfur. [7] UN Watch justice for child victims in Darfur in 2005. [8]

In August 2007, UN Watch director Hillel Neuer was the keynote speaker at the Save Darfur Canada rally in Montreal. [9] Neuer spoke together with Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, former commander of UN peacekeepers in the Balkans; Prof. Payam Akhavan, international law professor at McGill, and former senior advisor to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court; Simon Deng, a black Christian from the south of Sudan who was sold into slavery into the Muslim north; Miss World Canada Nazanin Afshin-Jam; and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel.

Israel's Magen David Adom service

AJC and UN Watch (operating in common) were among the hundreds and thousands of individuals, organizations, legislators, Red Cross federations, and others who contributed to the effort that led the International Red Cross to finally recognize the membership of Magen David Adom, the Israeli emergency service, as well as the Palestinian service. The head of the Red Cross, Swiss Foreign Minister Calmy-Rey met and magician Uri Geller all supported the cause.[10]

Human rights testimony

UN Watch has represented human rights victims in regular testimony before the UN Human Rights Council.

Its outspoken advocacy for student Jenya Taranenko preceded her release from a Russian prison. [11]

UN Watch's Neuer debated Zimbabwe's UN ambassador on CNN over the Mugabe regime's dismal human rights record. [12]

In 2007 UN Watch spoke out for the Arab, Kurdish, and Bahai victims of violations in Iran. [13]

Monitoring UN Officials

UN Watch monitors the actions of UN officials. Positive actions are praised while others are criticized when falling short of UN ideals.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

UN Watch has praised Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for speaking out for the victims of Darfur, confronting Sri Lanka over the killings of aid workers and acting to establish the international tribunal on the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon. [14] "Quietly but firmly, Ban is helping to confirm the UN's indispensable role in the world." [15]

UN Watch also praised Secretary-General Ban for following in the steps of his predecessor, Kofi Annan, in denouncing Holocaust denial and confronting the global scourge of anti-Semitism. [16]

Secretary General Kofi Annan

UN Watch has often praised the actions of Mr. Kofi Annan. "On Darfur, Mr. Annan is certainly one of the most outspoken leaders on the international scene." [17] In "Time to Rally for Annan's Human Rights Reform," UN Watch praised Mr. Annan's reform efforts. [18]

UN Experts Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani

UN Watch has several times spoken out for the rights of the "hero" Asma Janhangir, and her sister Hina Jilani, both of whom are UN human rights officials who have been subjected to arrest and detention by Pakistan. [19] During a peaceful protest in support of women’s rights held in Lahore on May 14, 2005, Ms. Jahangir and Ms. Jilani were among several women who were publicly humiliated, beaten and arrested by Pakistani police. UN Watch confronted Pakistan over its actions at the June 2005 annual session of UN human rights experts in Geneva, causing Pakistan to issue its first apology for the “extremely unfortunate” incident. [20]


Jean Ziegler

Jean Ziegler is "co-founder and vice-chairman of the foundation that administers the Moammar KhaddafiPrize for Human Rights, and arranged for Fidel Castro to win the US$250,000 award in 1998." [21] UN Watch has also described Jean Ziegler as "among the most vicious" of persecutors of Israel at the United Nations and a man who is obsessed with "bashing Israel." [22] In July 2006 UN Watch ran a campaign to 'Stop Jean Ziegler's nomination to the UN Human Rights Council' complete with proposed text of email to be sent to the Swiss Ambassador to the UN.[23]

According to the AJC:

AJC’s Geneva-based affiliate UN Watch has played a key role among non-governmental organizations in protesting the Swiss nomination of Jean Ziegler to a new UN post dealing with human rights. Ziegler, who had served for six years as the UN expert on hunger and was notoriously anti-Israel, was the subject of a thorough UN Watch report last year.[24]

The said UN Watch report included statements such as:

Ziegler is popular among Europe's trendy radicals for his anti-American writings and impassioned media appearances. He is also a hero for his frequent attacks on the Jewish state, all issued with his UN imprimatur...
In the summer of 2004, after it emerged that Ziegler was using UN staff and resources to run an anti-Israel boycott campaign, UN Watch petitioned for his removal with a legal brief to the UN Commission on Human Rights...It also documented a series of actions by Ziegler that showed a pattern of selective treatment of Israel, the only country he singled out for condemnation as a Nazi-like state that commits "state terror" and "war crimes."...The charges against Ziegler received wide media coverage, particularly in Switzerland but also in Europe, the United States, and Israel...UN Watch noted that under the European Union's definition of anti-Semitism, comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis is a classic manifestation of this form of hatred...Finally, UN Watch alerted the media to the need for the UN to condemn Ziegler's demonization of Israelis...The impact was immediate. On the same day, 7 July, the UN Watch press release was cited by a reporter at the daily press conference of Annan's spokesman in New York. Consequently, the spokesman soon issued a statement denouncing Ziegler for his remarks. The next day the spokesman for Arbour did the same, followed later by an even stronger statement by Arbour herself in a letter to UN Watch. Canada then sent Ziegler a formal complaint letter. Finally, some seventy members of the U.S. Congress wrote to Annan and the Commission Chair seeking Ziegler's resignation.
The story of this unprecedented condemnation was reported worldwide by Reuters, the Associated Press, the Washington Times, China's Xinhua, and the Jerusalem Post. Headlines reading "Ziegler Criticized by UN" appeared in a dozen different newspapers in Switzerland, including Le Temps, Basler Zeitung, and Tages-Anzeiger. For the first time, the UN community had condemned one of the Commission's human rights experts for anti-Semitism. Later stories about Ziegler, such as by the Associated Press, have cited this condemnation, for the first time providing readers with the necessary context. [25]

On October 27, 2005, UN Watch published a study which recommended that Kofi Annan and other UN high officials "condemn Jean Ziegler for bias" and that the Chairman of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, "should remove Jean Ziegler from the position of Special Rapporteur on the right to food" and "if the Chairman does not do so, the 53 State Members of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights should convene to adopt a resolution terminating Jean Ziegler’s term". Failing this, it recommended that "Ziegler should resign".[26]

Peter Hansen

UN Watch also furnished the "damning evidence" of UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen's "unprofessionalism" and "pro-Palestinian bias". During Operation Defensive Shield, which left 500 Palestinians dead and 1500 wounded (The Guardian, August 2, 2002) , '[h]e demanded...that Israel "end this pitiless assault on civilian refugee camps."' UN Watch then goes on to list another "infamous statement":

On April 18, he led a UN delegation there, after which he said: "I had hoped that the horror stories of Jenin were exaggerated and influenced by the emotions engaged, but I am afraid these were not exaggerated and that Jenin camp residents lived through a human catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history."
After characterizing the two sides to the conflict as "asymmetrical" militarily, he asserted that Israelis and Palestinians were also "asymmetrical in the legitimacy of their cause."[27]

UN Watch finally expressed satisfaction at Hansen's departure in a January 19, 2005 statement. It then added:

At a meeting in New York last month, reports The Guardian, Annan told Hansen: I dont have the political capital with the Americans to keep you. [28]

Mary Robinson

According to an Australian group, UN Watch has critiqued the actions of Mary Robinson. Here in a report from AIJAC the Australian chapter of the American Jewish Committee, the familiar story is told and UN Watch - which is also part of AJC - is described as 'respected':

In meetings with officials of UN Watch, a respected body monitoring UN adherence to its own Charter, she is stand-offish, circumspect and correct.
Each and every complaint submitted to Robinson has been rejected. Quizzed, for example, on the reference to Palestine as a state amongst many she has visited, Robinson dismisses this as convenient short-hand. By this yardstick, Robinson’s next visit to Lhasa (assuming she is ever allowed in) will be described as a visit to the sovereign state of Tibet.
UN Watch’s Michael Colson opines, "She does not exercise the kind of restraint the Secretary-General exercises. Mary Robinson, as far as I am concerned, has come close to violating the Charter." Even the "surprisingly even-handed" speech she recently gave outlining the actual chronology of the Palestinian violence, which demonstrated that Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount did not originate it, seems to have been a one-off. Rumour has it that the speech was the brainchild of a previously undetected impartial staffer. [29]

History

UN Watch is a non-governmental organization based in Geneva whose mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter. UN Watch was established in 1993 under the Chairmanship of Ambassador Morris B. Abram, the former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva. UN Watch participates actively at the UN as an accredited NGO in Special Consultative Status to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and as an Associate NGO to the UN Department of Public Information (DPI). Affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, the organization stands at the forefront at the United Nations in combating anti-Semitism and what former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described as the obsessive and one-sided condemnations of Israel that preoccupy several key UN bodies.

UN Watch supports the United Nations' mission on behalf of the international community to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war" and provide for a more just world. The Geneva-based NGO believes that even with its shortcomings, the UN remains an indispensable tool in bringing together diverse nations and cultures. UN Watch is keenly aware that member states often ask the UN to fulfill mandates and tasks that are neither feasible nor within the means provided. While it would be unrealistic to ignore the UN’s weaknesses, it advocates finding ways to build on its strengths and use its limited resources effectively.

UN Watch is foremost concerned with the just application of UN Charter principles. Areas of interest include: UN management reform, the UN and civil society, equality within the UN, and the equal treatment of member states. UN Watch notes that the disproportionate attention and unfair treatment applied by the UN toward Israel over the years offers an object lesson (though not the only one) in how due process, equal treatment, and other fundamental principles of the UN Charter are often ignored or selectively upheld.

Members

Chaired by Ambassador Alfred H. Moses (Chair), former US Ambassador to Romania and Presidential Emissary for the Cyprus Conflict, UN Watch is governed by an international board whose members include: Per Ahlmark (European Co-Chair), former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden; Professor Irwin Cotler, international human rights advocate and former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Canada; David A. Harris (Co-Chair), AJC Executive Director; Ambassador Max Jakobson, former Permanent Representative of Finland to the UN in New York; and Ruth Wedgwood, professor of international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University. UN Watch, Geneva, Switzerland

Staff

Neuer pic low res headshot.jpg

Executive Director: Hillel C. Neuer

Hillel C. Neuer is executive director of UN Watch, a human rights NGO in Geneva, Switzerland. Originally from Montreal, Neuer has written on law, politics and international affairs for publications such as the International Herald Tribune, Juriste International, Commentary, The New Republic Online and the Christian Science Monitor. He appears regularly before the UN Human Rights Council, intervening for a range of causes including the rape victims of Darfur, political prisoners in Cuba, and Middle East peace. He recently testified as an expert witness before a hearing of the U.S. Congress on UN reform, and is regularly quoted by major media organizations including the New York Times, Die Welt, Le Figaro and Reuters. In the past year Neuer has debated UN human rights issues on CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Prior to joining UN Watch, Neuer practiced commercial and civil rights litigation at the international law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. Active as a human rights defender, Neuer was cited by the Federal Court of New York for the high quality of his pro bono advocacy on a precedent-setting First Amendment case for prisoners’ rights and freedom of religion, as reported in AIDS Litigation Digest and the New York Law Journal. Neuer served as a law clerk to the Supreme Court of Israel. He holds a BA in intellectual history and political science from Concordia University, a BCL and LLB from the McGill University Faculty of Law, and a LLM in comparative constitutional law from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Neuer is a member of the New York bar and co-author of the Annotated Copyright Act of Canada and Directors and Officers—A Canadian Legal Manual.

McGill University Law School, Human Rights Center

Principals

Staff

Affiliations

Similar organizations

Contact information

1 rue de Varembé,(PO Box 191)
1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland.
Email: unwatch At unwatch.org
Phone: +41 22 734 14 72
Fax: +41 22 734 16 13
Website: http://www.unwatch.org/

Sourcewatch resources

Notes

  1. ^  Media Release, "UN Watch, AJC Seal Partnership", American Jewish Committee, January 4, 2001
  2. ^  Hillel C. Neuer, The Struggle against Anti-Israel Bias at the UN Commission on Human Rights, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, January 11, 2006
  3. ^  AJC Weekly News Update 211, 21 June 2006.
  4. ^  AJC Update 204 (email distribution) 26 April 2006
  5. ^  UNRWA Commissioner General Peter Hansen: A Profile of Unprofessionalism, UN Watch, November 14, 2003 ; Note: According to Human Rights Watch in Jenin "Israeli forces committed serious violations of humanitarian law, some amounting prima facie to war crimes." About 4,000 Palestinians were left homeless in "destruction [that] extended well beyond any conceivable purpose of gaining access to fighters, and was vastly disproportionate to the military objectives pursued."
  6. ^  Wednesday Watch, UN Watch, January 19, 2005
  7. ^  Jean Ziegler's Campaign Against America A Study by UN Watch, October 27, 2005
  8. ^  Daniel Mandel, Something About Mary, The Review, January 2001
  9. ^  Lynne Cohen, Canada condemns anti-Israel remarks of UN official it helped to elect, Jewish Tribune, August 4, 2005
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