Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- May 13, 1998
U.N. human rights post goes to critic of U.S. death penalty
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
NEW YORK
The Senegalese lawyer who last month criticized America's use of the death penalty has been appointed to run the United Nations' human rights office in New York.
Bacre Waly Ndiaye issued a report last month urging the United States to suspend capital punishment until its "unfair, arbitrary and discriminatory" nature can be resolved.
That report, which objected to execution of the mentally retarded, juvenile offenders and women, compared America's record to Iran's and Yemen's, among others, and raised hackles among some legislators, who felt the United Nations should spend its time investigating truly abusive governments.
Others, including the State Department, said the United States should submit to the same inspections it endorses for other nations.
News of Mr. Ndiaye's appointment took American officials by surprise.
"It's our view that he did a poor job investigating our prison system, and his assessment was flawed," U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson said yesterday. "I hope he'll do a better job in his new assignment."
Marc Theissen, spokesman for Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican, called the appointment "a poke in the eye."
"We've long known that the way to get promoted in the United Nations is to beat up on the United States," he said.
Mr. Ndiaye, who is praised by human rights experts as professional and experienced, will be the third-highest human rights official in the United Nations. His appointment as director of the New York office will be effective June 1.
"I am looking forward to working with Bacre Ndiaye, and I am confident that he will play a very important role in the further development of our work," wrote Mary Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, in an April 22 message to human rights advocates.
"As head of the N.Y. office he will play a key role in the implementation of the [secretary-general's] reform measures," she wrote.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan made the appointment on Mrs. Robinson's recommendation.
Formerly a small liaison office between the organization's New York headquarters and the human rights operations in Geneva, the seven-person office is to be upgraded and strengthened, according to the organization's human rights World Wide Web page.
When he became secretary-general in January 1997, Mr. Annan said he planned to reinvigorate the nearly dormant human rights component of the organization. He recruited Mrs. Robinson, the former president of Ireland, to head the office, and mainstreamed human rights by discussing those issues in terms of development, peacekeeping and other U.N. functions.
Although the High Commissioner for Human Rights is based in Geneva, the General Assembly, which sets priorities and allocates budgets, is based in New York. So are the monthly meetings of Mr. Annan's executive committees, which set priorities and agendas for U.N. activities.
The job pays roughly $100,000 after taxes and carries a $33,394 cost-of-living allowance.
Mr. Ndiaye came to the United States in October for a two-week tour of prisons and interviews with lawmakers in Washington and several states. That visit, sanctioned by the State Department, outraged some members of Congress, who denounced the visit as an "insult" to the United States' legal system.
Mr. Ndiaye's homeland of Senegal has its own human rights problems. According to the 1996 State Department human rights report, its government "generally respects the human rights of its citizens, [but] there were serious problems in some areas, particularly torture by police of suspects during questioning, arbitrary arrest and lengthy pretrial detention."
As the Human Rights Commission's special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Mr. Ndiaye has conducted investigations in Papua New Guinea, Burundi, Colombia, Indonesia and East Timor, and Peru.Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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