Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Hannay of Chiswick (Crossbench). It was answered on Monday, 1 June 2009.

UN: Durban Review Conference

Question: My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is not too soon to start thinking about the review of the Human Rights Council’s operations, to be undertaken in 2011? We should start to talk to a wide range of countries around the world about how the council could perform better, as it is performing so lamentably badly at the moment.

Answer: My Lords, I notice that the noble Lord has already contributed to that process in a recent editorial piece. He is absolutely right: the Human Rights Council is performing well below our hopes, but I have to put it in the broader context of something of a global crisis in human rights. I am afraid to say that double standards and the shifting in power between the West and other parts of the world have put many of the gains that we took for granted in human rights—whether they cover the rights of women or the so-called doctrine of the responsibility to protect—in crisis across many of these areas.

Secondary information