Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
With every image of a murdered civilian lying on the sidewalk in a Ukrainian town devastated by occupying Russian forces, with every interview of a tearful woman mourning dead relatives by the side of a grave, the level of frustration rises around the world.
How can Russian President Vladimir Putin get away with brazenly assaulting a neighboring country, targeting noncombatants and killing thousands of innocent people while repeatedly claiming his troops are not committing atrocities or aiming at civilians? Can’t he be stopped?
The West, led by the United States and other NATO members, has been arming Ukraine’s defenders and imposing harsh economic sanctions on Russia. But the world’s new weapon, metaphorically speaking, aims to isolate Russia on international organizations.
That’s why on Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly voted to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, the body charged with the “promotion and protection of human rights around the globe.” The vote was 93 in favor, 24 against and 58 abstentions. (Russia later said it was “withdrawing” by choice, but would continue to fulfill its international obligations on human rights.)
The fact that Russia had a prestigious seat on the UNHRC at a time when it is slaughtering civilians and committing what many world leaders have deemed war crimes shows just how broken the UN system is. That the UNGA was able to issue a damning indictment by expelling it from the UNHRC shows that, profoundly flawed as it is, the UN still provides a place for the expression of the world’s outrage.
But barring Putin’s Russia from the UNHRC is a purely symbolic act. It will not save a single life. Unless, that is, it becomes the first move in an effort to repair the architecture of international diplomatic institutions.
The UN’s failure has never been more visible than in this war. Russia, the perpetrator of ongoing atrocities that shock our conscience, holds the most powerful tool of international diplomacy: veto power in the UN Security Council. No major action can be approved against the aggressor because Russia can just stop it.
The exasperation with the UN’s impotence was palpable when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the body on Tuesday, the day after he visited Bucha, the Kyiv suburb whose name is now synonymous with mass graves and the death of innocent Ukrainians.
Zelensky described what he saw after Russia’s retreat, “They cut off limbs, cut their throats…Women were raped and killed in front of their children.” (Russia’s spokesman has denied these claims, calling them “groundless” and “a forgery,” even though the horrors in Bucha were only discovered once the Russians occupation of the suburb ended and just as Human Rights Watch announced it had documented allegations of war crimes there.)
“Where is the security that the Security Council needs to guarantee?” Zelensky demanded of its members, making the essentially impossible demand that Russia be expelled from the UN’s most important body. “What is the purpose of our organization?” he asked of an audience shamed into silence.
As Zelensky pointed out, Chapter 1, Article 1 of the UN Charter, declares the UN’s purpose as the preservation of peace and security. In fact, the entire charter reads like a blueprint for indicting Russia. Article 2, for example, commits members to refrain from threatening the use of force against the territorial integrity of their neighbors.
Does Putin care that he’s been thrown out of the UNHRC, or that members are calling for Russia’s expulsion from the G20? No big deal, said his prevaricating spokesman. But history has shown that Putin is obsessed with Russia’s prestige as a global power, and belonging to these organizations is a badge of honor.
After Russia illegally seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the G8 expelled Russia (making the group the G7). Once Donald Trump became president, he repeatedly tried to get the G7 to readmit Putin, causing serious friction with the other countries, which forcefully rejected the idea. If Putin were not interested in returning to the group, it’s hard to imagine Trump would have advocated for him – raising more questions about his relationship with Putin – to make it happen.
Ahead of Thursday’s vote to suspend Russia from the UNHRC, the Chinese ambassador warned that the move would set a dangerous precedent. We can only hope he is right, and that the precedent will be dangerous for the many tyrants whose representatives have crippled the body’s mission – to the detriment of those enduring human rights abuses around the world.
Those that vote against expelling Russia look like a who’s who of human rights violators. The list of countries that have sat on the UNHRC also includes an appalling sample of violators, which explains why the organization’s work seems like a satire of its mission.
Among those elected in recent years to defend human rights are not only Russia but also China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and others. The parody extends to other organizations. North Korea was chosen to chair a UN disarmament forum; Iran to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
Just as Russia’s presence in the Security Council helps shield it from the UN, violators can protect themselves and each other at the UNHRC. Since its founding, it has created only one commission of inquiry on North Korea and a handful of other countries. Notably, there have been none on China, Iran or the many other countries accused of chronic human rights abuses. Not even one on Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
It established one regarding Ukraine a few weeks ago, fully eight years after Russia invaded Crimea and stoked a separatist war in eastern Ukraine, and decades after Putin’s actions in Chechnya and against opponents at home. Meanwhile, there have been nine UNHRC-mandated inquiries or investigations into Israel, a country that is far from perfect, but one with a democratically elected government, hardly deserving of this level of critical attention relative to the rest of the world.
Arguably, most countries – including the United States – have perpetrated moral transgressions. Few, if any, are without stain. That makes it harder for them to claim the moral high ground, a phenomenon that clears the path for the worst violators.
But this is not the first time the international community has ended Moscow’s stint at the UNHRC. In 2016, in the midst of Russia’s brutal bombardment of Aleppo in Syria, Russia tried to win reelection to the UNHRC. In a shocking blow, it was blocked. But it didn’t take long before the same regime in Moscow, a chronic violator of human rights, was elected again; and now suspended.
So, will anything change now?
It’s hard to be optimistic. But there’s a general sense that Putin’s Ukraine invasion is reshaping the global order. If ever there was a time to rethink the structure of international institutions – and to develop a means to make respect for basic norms a condition for legitimacy and influence within those institutions – that time is now.
After all, the mass graves in Ukraine, the new orphans and widows, and the horrors that we will likely soon discover are proof that the current system has failed in its primary mission.
