CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Track Record of the Collective West In Regards to Human Rights and International Law

Photograph Source: Avash Media – CC BY 4.0

A detached observer who wants to assess where countries stand on fundamental issues of human rights, international law, peace, development and multilateralism need only look at the voting record of States at the United Nations Security Council, General Assembly, Human Rights Council and other international agencies.

Voting is where it’s at.  This is the bottom line – a reliable litmus test to discover what countries really stand for, how they  perceive international law and morals, who promotes the uniform implementation of norms, who practices exceptionalism[1], who aspires to a multilateral world of cooperation, and who only gives lip service to humanistic values while aggressively weaponizing human rights for confrontational geopolitics. The patterns that emerge are clear:  The collective West invokes exceptionalism and systematically undermines the principles and purposes of the United Nations, consistently voting against peace initiatives, demilitarization, economic and social development.  I devote a chapter to this phenomenon in my book The Human Rights Industry.[2]

Back in 1984 the General Assembly adopted resolution 39/11, the UN Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace.[3] The vote was adopted by 92 in favour, zero against, 34 abstentions.  The collective West and its vassals found themselves in the third category.  In 2009 the Human Rights Council asked the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to convene a workshop on the right to peace, in which I participated as one of the experts[4].  We produced a strong report.[5]

In 2012 the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council adopted a comprehensive draft of a declaration on the right to peace, which incorporated enormous input from civil society, notably the 2010 Declaración de Santiago de Compostela[6], including the creation of a monitoring mechanism.  The Human Rights Council then entrusted the final drafting to an open-ended inter-governmental working group, in which I participated in my function as UN Independent Expert on International Order[7].  I watched in disgust  The how the collective West, notably the United States, eviscerated the text, so that what the General Assembly finally adopted in 2016 was muss less than what the world had in 1984[8]. The forces of militarism had grown too powerful in the Human Rights Council and the legal arguments were twisted and distorted beyond recognition. Orwellian newspeak was the rule, not the exception.

Every year the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council adopt resolutions condemning unilateral coercive measures[9] as contrary to the UN Charter, international law, freedom of navigation, the prohibition of interference in the internal affairs of States, etc.  More than two thirds of the members vote in favour[10], the collective West votes against.  It is instructive to read the explanation of vote by the European Union, a classic example of cognitive dissonance.  Every year the General Assembly adopts a resolution condemning the illegal embargo of Cuba.  On 29 October 2025 the 33rd such resolution was adopted.  Who voted against?   US, Israel, Argentina, Hungary, Paraguay, North Macedonia, and Ukraine[11].  Who abstained? Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Czechia, Ecuador, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Moldova and Romania. In 2024 the vote had been 187 in favour and only two votes against, the US and Israel.

On 8 October 2021 the Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 48/7, a landmark declaration on the sequels and legacies of colonialism[12]. “Recognizing with concern that the legacies of colonialism, in all their manifestations, such as economic exploitation, inequality within and among States, systemic racism, violations of indigenous peoples’ rights, contemporary form of slavery and damage to cultural heritage, have a negative impact on the effective enjoyment of all human rights, Recognizing that colonialism has led to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples were victims of colonialism and continue to be victims of its consequences, Expressing deep concern at the violations of human rights of indigenous peoples committed in colonial contexts, and stressing the need for States to take all measures necessary to protect rights and ensure the safety of indigenous peoples, especially indigenous women and children, to restore truth and justice and to hold perpetrators accountable, 1. Stresses the utmost importance of eradicating colonialism and addressing the negative impact of the legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of human rights; 2. Calls for Member States, relevant United Nations bodies, agencies and other relevant stakeholders to take concrete steps to address the negative impact of the legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of human rights.” As expected, the collective West abstained.

On 21 March 2026 the General Assembly adopted a resolution proposed by the government of Ghana on the sequels of the slave trade and the implications for human rights and development today[13].  Who voted against?  The United States, Israel and Argentina. The rest of the collective West and their friends abstained. “For more than 400 years, millions of people were stolen from Africa, put in shackles and shipped to the New World to toil in cotton fields and sugar and coffee plantations under scorching  heat and the crack of the whip. Denied their basic humanity and even their own names, they were forced to endure generations of exploitation with repercussions that reverberate today, including persistent anti-Black racism and discrimination.” The resolution emphasised “the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity by reason of the definitive break in world history, scale, duration, systemic nature, brutality and enduring consequences that continue to structure the lives of all people through racialized regimes of labour, property and capital.”

Self-serving narratives

Notwithstanding the obvious, the mainstream narrative will have us believe that the “collective West” – the United States, Canada, Australia, and most European States – are the cradle of international law and democracy, that they possess moral superiority over the rest of the world. Is this perception justified and empirically verifiable?

As an American and Swiss citizen, I observe that relentless propaganda and public relations have constructed this self-serving fantasy that schoolbooks and university textbooks dutifully disseminate and reconfirm, not only in the US but also in many European countries. Western culture, folklore, television, movies, internet are all imbued by the almost religious faith that we are “the good guys”, which by implication means that the rest of the world are the “bad guys”, and that we have a mission to bring democracy and human rights to them.

Of course, when we in the collective West use the world “democracy”, we do not mean the correlation between the will of the people and the rules that govern them. There is in fact a glaring disconnect between Western governments and the people.  While governments engage in war propaganda and the demonisation of purported “enemies”, the population of the US and most European countries overwhelmingly plead for peace and prosperity, prefer butter over guns.

Part of the disconnect is reflected semantically in the misuse of terminology.  For the “elites” of the collective West, “democracy” actually means our economic system.  In many texts the words democracy and predator capitalism are interchangeable. Another problem is one of perception.  Average citizens have other priorities and prefer to believe in the honesty and good intentions of our governments, no matter how often they lie to us, no matter how often we have caught them lying. This can be summed up in Julius Caesar’s famous remark quae volumus, ea credimus libenter[14] – we believe what we want to believe.  Worse still, we may recall another Latin phrase mundus vult decipi – the world wants to be deceived – ergo decipiatur – therefore let’s continue lying to them[15].

Notwithstanding the rational arguments brought forth by Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus, Ramsey Clark, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Arundhati Roy, Mia Mottley, Francis Boyle, John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs to rebut phoney government narratives, the power of the mainstream media is such that the majority of Americans, Brits, Frenchmen and Germans are honestly convinced of the purported moral superiority of our “democratic” governments and their right to tell others how to run their affairs.

The false image that we in the collective West have of ourselves and our leaders rests on fake news that gradually matured into fake history, subsequently cemented by fake law.  Politicians are wont to invent international law as they go along, and this fake law is shaped by government lawyers, who are essentially “pens for hire”, paid to write what the government wants, at least to make a plausible argument in the required legal jargon.

We in the collective West certainly suffer from an underdeveloped faculty of self-criticism. But I fear that this serious human flaw is also shared by many others, including the Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, and Russians.  Conscientious objectors to groupthink and official narratives are seen as dangerous traitors, as heretics.  This is not a modern phenomenon.  Socrates, Seneca, Giordano Bruni[16], were eliminated by the very societies they tried to enlighten. Other heretics survived because they recanted at the last minute, e.g. Galileo Galilei[17].

Today’s “heretics” are our whistleblowers like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, John Kirikakou, Daniel Ellsberg and many others.  I dedicated my book The Human Rights Industry[18] to forty whistleblowers who have tried to open our eyes to the crimes committed not only by our governments but also by the private sector, by corporations that have profited from war and thus promoted conflict throughout the world. We should honour whistleblowers as heroes of our time, as courageous persons who have risked their lives and careers to tell us truths that our governments have withheld from us. Today’s “heretics” also include........

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