The brutal conclusion to the quarter century long conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE has left a quarter of a million refugees and between 7,000-20,000 civilian dead in its wake. That the death toll varies to such a degree is testament to the Sri Lankan government’s abject failure to allow international aid agencies and the media access to the conflict zone, almost certainly for fear that to do so would hinder it in its zeal to finish the job.

Though reprehensible, the failure of the Sri Lankan government in this matter is not surprising, and though not necessarily forgivable, is at least understandable. The conflict between the government and the LTTE cost Sri Lanka the lives of tens of thousands of its citizens and several billion dollars of economic disruption. That the government would always seize the chance to terminate the conflict with both hands was wholly predictable.

The real failure in this saga was on the part of the United Nations to press the Sri Lankan government harder to allow the aid agencies and the press into the conflict zone, who together would almost certainly have succeeded in focusing the Sri Lankan government’s mind on the importance of minimising the collatoral civilian damage of the conflict.

Almost as bad has been the resolution passed by the ironically named United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in response to the conclusion of hostilities. Far from highlighting the civilian cost of the conflict, or criticising the Sri Lankan government’s exclusionary policy re international organisations, the resolution “Welcomes the conclusion of hostilities and the liberation by the Government of Sri Lanka of tens of thousands of its citizens that were kept by the LTTE against their will as hostages, as well as the efforts by the Government to ensure safety and security for all Sri Lankans and bringing permanent peace to the country.”

The roll call of nations that voted for this resolution included some with what could, at best, be called dubious human rights records, including China, Egypt, Russia and Saudi Arabia amongst others.

Casual observers of the UN may well ask how an organisation that pledges almost in the first sentence of its charter “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person”, can fail in this task quite as often as it does.

The truth is that at the heart of this organisation is a fundamental and perhaps even irreconcilable contradiction. On the one hand, the UN pledges to uphold human rights, but on the other to be a truly universal organisation that represents all nations and recognises the “sovereign equality of all its Members”. Unfortunately, the UN is and can only be as effective as its members wish to make it, and there are very many members of the UN, including two of the five permanent members of the Security Council, who do not possess governments committed to the maintenance of human rights in any meaningful sense of the word.

The composition of the Human Rights Council is a case in point. Predominantly made up of African and Middle Eastern countries with decidedly dubious track records on human rights protection, the UNHRC has been accused of “partisan posturing and regional divides” and failing to get on with actual protecting ordinary people from abuse by none other than UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself. Mr Ban is one of many to have criticised UNHRC members for voting more often with a view to protecting members’ interests than protecting human rights. The UNHRC was established in 2006 to replace the ineffectual and discredited Commission on Human Rights, though quite how Member States believed a change in the name would effect a change in conduct is hard to fathom. According to Freedom House, just 22 of the UNHRC’s 47 members can be called free countries.

The sad truth is that many UN Member States are staunchly opposed to the UN involving itself in human rights work that might highlight failings by a Member government because they fear that to do so would lead to greater pressure on them to show greater restraint toward their own dissident minorities. The problem of what to do to improve the situation seems almost insurmountable. Does the UN want to guarantee human rights, or to be a universally representative organisation that guarantees the soveriegn equality of all its members? It seemingly cannot do both.

One of the biggest problems confronting even those countries that are serious about human rights is the inevitability of power politics in any situation that involves one country putting pressure on another. This was historically the case during the Cold War, when Western countries, and in particular the United States, gave succour to often brutal dictatorships in order to prevent them from falling under the Soviet sphere of influence. Many have criticised India’s failure to do more in Sri Lanka in recent weeks, and New Delhi’s comparative silence might seem all the more surprising given the large number of ethnically Tamil Indians who live in the south of the country.

However, even putting aside recollections of India’s disastrous intervention in 1983, what also needs to be considered is the role of China in the region. China has been credited with supplying the Sri Lankan government with the arms it required to defeat the Tamil insurgency, and China’s desire to establish itself as a strategic entitity in the Indian Ocean is currently being facilitated by the construction of a $1 billion port in the Sri Lankan town of Hambantota. India cannot afford to push the Sri Lankan government too hard for fear of Sri Lanka turning away from India to China for strategic solidarity. It was China, aided by Russia, that blocked discussion of the Sri Lankan situation in the UN Security Council.

China, indeed, is the principle obstacle to the furtherance of human rights not just in Sri Lanka, but globally. It operates a strict policy of what could be termed “live and let buy”, trading with any and all of the world’s nations, asking no questions of their commitment to human rights, and doing everything it possibly can to prevent others from doing so. China’s relations with Sudan are a case in point. Wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity President al-Bashir may be, but that does not deter China from buying almost 80 per cent of Sudan’s exports. Without China’s willingness to provide the Sudanese regime with this economic prop, and without its obstructing the efforts of the Security Council to pass stronger resolutions on the Sudanese situation, considerable improvements in Sudan’s human rights record, if not outright regime change, might already have been effected.

Ultimately, where human rights are concerned, the economic strength of countries wishing either to effect or obstruct progress is what really counts. “Money talks” as the saying goes. It is no coincidence that the most frequently used weapon in the international community’s human rights armoury is the economic sanction.

This is why the West must seize the chance to effect meaningful change to the way the international community approaches the issue of human rights whilst it still can. With a combined GDP of more than $33 billion, the EU and the US alone account for more than half of the global economy of $62.3 trillion. Likewise, the EU and US together constitute more than 60 per cent of Sri Lanka’s export market. However, the seemingly unstoppable economic rise of China is reducing that ratio in both cases.

It can only be hoped that as China’s middle class increases in size, so in turn they will become less and less tolerant of their country’s human rights policy, both at home and abroad. Until then, however, those countries that are serious about human rights need to establish a human rights council that is separate from the United Nations, and that is able and willing to not only call human rights abuse by its name, but to authorise genuinely effective action as and when such abuse takes place. There is no pretending that this organisation would be a silver bullet. Sudan is one case in point, and North Korea another, that if a regime truly wishes to isolate itself and ruin the country’s economy in the process, then it will not shirk from doing so. So long as such regimes can find at least one strong ally such as China, they can very often hang on.

However, there are a great many other countries with regimes that are not quite so cavalier, and who may well respond to real pressure if effectively applied.  At present, the approach of countries with a commitment to the furtherance of human rights is nowhere near coherant enough, and is still dominated by power politics. These countries still seek to present a united front through the vehicle of the UN, as the world body with the most international legitimacy. However, as has been demonstrated in Sri Lanka, the UN is all too often hamstringed by the truculence of members who do not share that commitment to human rights.

Countries that do hold that commitment should be willing to take a radical step and commit themselves to a human rights council that would put the maintenance of human rights above partisan considerations and whose decisions would be binding on all Member States. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights cannot continue to be an aspirational document devoid of any enforcement provisions. It should serve as the basis for this human rights council, and if its articles are deemed by the council to have been breeched by any country, then that should compel member states to take the action recommended by the council.

A government must exist solely for the purpose of serving the best interests of its people. That his fundamental human rights are protected is surely the highest earthly interest any man can have. Those governments that consistently fail to serve the best interests of their people must be made to pay the consequences. If the United Nations remains as the principle body through which nations with a respect for human rights seek to exert themselves, then that simply will not happen.