UN human rights official Arbour set to resign in June

UN: LOUISE ARBOUR, the top UN human rights official, will step down on June 30th, according to sources close to her. It will end a four-year term that has been highlighted by confrontation with the Bush administration over the Iraq war, the death penalty and US efforts against terrorism.

Ms Arbour (61) declined to confirm whether she would leave the post of UN high commissioner for human rights. In an interview last Friday, she said the US-led counterterrorism struggle had set back the cause of human rights by "decades" and had exacerbated a "profound divide" between the US, its Western allies and the developing world.

"The war on terror has inflicted a very serious setback for the international human rights agenda," she said.

Ms Arbour, a former UN prosecutor of war crimes who secured the indictment of the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, said bedrock principles once taken for granted - including the prohibition against torture - had been eroded, and that what she considered as Washington's excesses had undercut her efforts to crusade for human rights, particularly in places where political repression was greatest.

Human rights advocates have largely praised Ms Arbour, a former Canadian supreme court judge, as a tough, principled lawyer who has offered the UN's most forceful critique of the US's use of harsh interrogation techniques and the transfer of suspects to countries where they stand a chance of being tortured.

They note that she has done much to expand the presence of UN rights monitors around the world.

However, she has also been a lightning rod for US conservatives, including former US envoy to the UN, John Bolton, who scolded her in 2005 for using Human Rights Day to criticise US anti-terrorism tactics instead of highlighting rights abuses by countries such as Burma, Cuba and Zimbabwe.

Even supporters say she has trod lightly over abuses by some of the most powerful UN members, including China and Russia, leaving the United Nations increasingly silent on one of the world's most pressing human rights issues.

Ms Arbour acknowledged that she had taken a more diplomatic approach to promoting human rights in places such as China and Russia, saying that she had chosen a strategy of private engagement "that is likely to yield some positive results" over one that "would make me and a lot of others feel good".

She said that as a UN official she was constrained by the reality of its power centres, including China, Russia and the Group of 77, a bloc of more than 130 developing countries. In that context, she said, "naming and shaming is a loser's game".

Ms Arbour has told friends that she is leaving to spend more time with her family and to avoid a bitter political battle over a major anti-racism summit next year in Durban. The US, Israel and Canada have already said they will boycott it, believing it will be a forum for unwarranted criticism of Israel.

Ms Arbour's influence in the UN has diminished since the departure of UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who made human rights a major priority of his tenure and frequently relied on her counsel.

© 2008 Los Angeles Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times