Geneva – The Indonesian ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Makarim Wibisono, Monday was elected chairman of the UN Human Rights Commission despite concerns by some campaigners that his country has done too little to tackle its own abuses.
The chairman can exercise considerable influence in scheduling of sensitive issues and debates during the six-week commission session each spring. Often the chairman has to work as a mediator to find common ground among member governments, who sometimes bitterly disagree on the most controversial issues.
Loubna Freih, spokeswoman for the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, said she hoped Wibisono would "be as fair a chairman as possible."
The job, which lasts for one year, traditionally rotates among ambassadors of the five geographical groupings in the United Nations. He succeeds Ambassador Mike Smith of Australia, a member of the Western Group.
Wibisono, a seasoned diplomat, had been proposed by the Asian group of UN members and was appointed by consensus among the 53 commission member nations, ranging from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Other current members include Brazil, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan and the United States. This year the annual session of the commission, the top UN human rights watchdog, opens March 14.
It is expected to ponder the perennial questions of human rights in individual countries, including China, Cuba, Nepal and Sudan's conflict-ravaged Darfur region.
Freih said Indonesia's own record deserves scrutiny. Campaigners have long cited abuses by Indonesia's military in breakaway regions of the country, including Aceh, where the tsunami that struck last month compounded the impact of years of conflict. They also point to abuses by the military in West Papua and in East Timor in the decades before it won independence in a UN-supervised referendum in 1999.
Indonesian authorities have rejected claims of human rights violations, and said that the security forces are obliged to take action against separatists to safeguard the country's territorial integrity.