On July 27

On this day in ...
... 1990 (20 years ago today), a Declaration of Sovereignty was adopted by the Supreme Soviet of Belarus, naming the Republic of Belarus (map below)

a sovereign state established on the basis of the realization by the Belarusian nation of its inalienable right to self-determination, state-language status of the Belarusian language, and the supremacy of the people in the determination of its destiny.

Thus did the Belarus (prior posts) break from the Soviet Union with which it had been affiliated since the end of World War II. This declaration was among many in 1990, "The Year of USSR Independence and Sovereignty Declarations," as Helsinki Watch, predecessor of Human Rights Watch, called it.

(Prior July 27 posts are here, here, and here.)

It's a START

The same week as the release of a new U.S. nuclear strategy, a New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is to be signed in Prague Thursday by the Presidents of Russia and the United States.
Well known is the treaty's acronym, START. Or, to use the term preferred by the White House, New START. (Prior posts on nuclear policy are here, here, and here.)
"New START" marks a distinction from START I, a multilateral treaty due to expire toward the end of this year. START I had been negotiated before the fall of the Soviet Union; it entered into force thereafter, with Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States exchanging instruments of ratification in Budapest on December 5, 1994.
Another reason for preferring "New START": START II proved a bit of a false start. Signed in 1993 by U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin and fully ratified by 2000, the treaty never was implemented. As explained in a Moscow Times story yesterday,

Russia withdrew from START II in 2002, the day after the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The aim of START I was to reduce levels of "strategic offensive arms" -- including nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles -- in 3 phases. At the end, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine were to "have no strategic nuclear forces," while U.S. and Russian "strategic arsenals" were to be "reduced by 30–40 percent."

New START, announced a week ago Monday, is the result of protracted negotiations that included the Presidents' side meeting during Copenhagen, the December climate change conference. As described by former State Department official Stephen Sestanovich, now a Columbia diplomacy professor and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations the 2 countries have detailed in New START

cuts of hundreds of strategic nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles as the main lever of their so-called 'reset.'

(photo credit; and see here) Also key, according to the White House, is a "verification regime" that "will provide the ability to monitor all aspects of the Treaty."

Promising stuff, at least through signing. But then comes the ratification. Although Sestanovich is optimistic, some predict ratification difficulties Stateside:

[T]he Russian daily Kommersant reported that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev likely won't have difficulty getting the Russian Parliament to ratify the agreement, but U.S. President Barack Obama will have a harder time achieving the two-thirds majority needed for passage by the U.S. Senate [right].

Perhaps more than one new start is in order.

U.N. rapporteurs no longer so special?

The Human Rights Council this week stoked the controversy that's surrounded it since its founding in 2006.
The Council supplanted the Human Rights Commission -- a six-decades-old body that critics contended had become too political and, more to the point, too beholden to the politics of countries not themselves known for compliance with international human rights norms. Yet on many fronts human rights reform has not accompanied this re-forming of the U.N.'s human rights apparatus.
Not only has the Council concentrated on Israel to the exclusion of other countries, but it, like its predecessor, has included many human rights transgressors. Indeed, transgressors' sway may have increased, given the decision of the United States not to seek a seat on the Council. (Some surmise the the United States refused to run after counting noses and realizing that, on account of its own post-9/11 behavior, it might not win were it in fact to campaign for a seat.)
Add now yesterday's news of what Le Monde calls "a new breach in the system of 'special rapporteurs' inherited from the former Commission." On Thursday, Le Monde wrote,

under the pressure of the African group, and with the support of the Islamic Conference, China, and Russia, the Council proclaimed -- 'by consensus' -- the nonrenewal of the mandate of the 'special rapporteur' on the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly, Zaïre), a country where human rights violates continue to be massive.

Congo thus joined Cuba and Belarus as countries who've been freed of Special Rapporteur investigations in 2 years, and adds fuel to concerns that most such mandates soon will disappear. Julie Gromellon of the Fédération internationale des droits de l'homme (FIDH) decried the notion that notion that a "thematic rapporteur" would do the job of the country-based expert, while Juliette de Rivero of Human Rights Watch issued this warning:

The Human Rights Council put politics before people by deciding not to renew the expert mandate on the Congo. Downgrading the council's work in Congo despite the recent rapes and killings is inexplicable and could have tragic consequences.

Sovereign Democracy?

In a couple of earlier posts (here and here), "Grace O'Malley" [IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann] and I discussed the fact that “democracy” has many meanings. Judy Dempsey writes in the Herald Tribune that Russia is now openly advocating a repressive political philosophy it calls “sovereign democracy”: subordinating democratic values to national interests. According to this “philosophy”, the foreign supervision Russia is subject to as a member of the Council of Europe (COE) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is nothing more than foreign meddling in Russia’s internal affairs. Thus, Russia is currently blocking reforms at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) (at right), the court established in Strasbourg, France to hear human rights claims from individuals living in the 47 COE member states. Judges at the Court are seeking reforms to help deal with the 89,000-case backlog (while 90% of ECHR claims are dismissed as inadmissible, they still must be examined individually). Russia joined the court in 1996 and implemented the European Human Rights Convention in 1998. Since then, over 48,790 complaints have been filed against Russia – more than against any other country. Of those, 10,569 were lodged in 2006 alone, when the ECHR found 96 violations. As COE chair last year, Russia suggested the Council shift priorities away from human rights to education, culture, illegal migration, human trafficking and combating terrorism. Russia is also trying to curb election-monitoring activities undertaken by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Vienna. A division of the OSCE founded in 1976, the Office monitored elections in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine in which Russian-backed regimes were toppled by pro-democracy revolutions (below). Despite its criticisms of these organizations, however, Russia is not renouncing membership. Instead, it created the Collective Security Treaty Organization in 2003, which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Political cooperation and collective security are the main purposes; interference in member states' internal affairs is strictly forbidden. Russia is also supporting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. which was founded in 2001 to fight terrorism and cross-border crime and, again, includes Russia and several Central Asian countries. This organization also directly competes with the Office for Democratic Institutions in observing elections. As Dempsey points out, this is a sad turn-around “for a rich and self-confident country that during the 1990s had fought hard to be accepted into Europe's human rights organizations”. While I cannot help but agree, I also cannot help but note that “Guantánamo”: from the camp itself to the Patriot Act, NSA wiretapping, CIA renditions and secret detention camps, abuse and disappearance of Muslim prisoners within the US, and withdrawing from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to avoid scrutiny of our application of the death penalty to foreign citizens are all signs of a return to sovereign democracy here at home.