M-190 United Nations Human Rights Council

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should ensure that the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) upholds its mandate to protect the victims of major human rights violations and hold the major violators of human rights to account by: (a) introducing country-specific resolutions against the major human rights violators, such as Iran and Libya; (b) convening special sessions to address urgent situations of gross human rights violations in the world; (c) protecting freedom of speech and opposing campaigns to silence any discussion of the targeting of vulnerable minorities or women's rights by characterising it as a form of "defamation" and "racism"; (d) protecting equality before the law at the UN and putting an end to the prejudicial practice of singling out one UN member state — Israel — for selective and discriminatory treatment; (e) protecting international due process at the UN by ending the discriminatory practice whereby one member state is the object of more condemnatory resolutions than the rest of the states of the international community combined; (f) remove permanent Agenda Item Number 7 that institutionalizes such discrimination and thereby denies equality before the law and international due process in the UNHRC; (g) defending the rights of human rights NGOs at the council, and preserving their historic role as independent voices that can hold governments to account; (h) opposing the election of human rights violators such as Libya to the council, while encouraging countries with the strongest human rights record to stand for election to the council in their respective regional groups; (i) encouraging positive work of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and defending the independent work of the Commissioner against escalating attempts to control her activities and agenda; (j) protecting Special Rapporteurs on human rights issues and defending the council's independent rights monitors from efforts to intimidate them or influence their work; and (k) strengthening the universal periodic review through fair and informed questioning of every country reviewed.