g servitude . . . Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law . . . No one shall be subject to arbitrary detention or exile" (Draper, 1982, p. 14).
Since then the United Nations General Assembly has adopted a number of supplementary Conventions dealing with the rights of prisoners of war, against genocide and discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities, prohibiting torture and barbaric medical treatment, on the status of refugees and on the rights of women and children. The Council of Europe passed in 1950 the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR). In the UN these rights can be enforced by individuals through what is called the 1503 procedure, complaints to the 43 Member UN Commission on Human Rights, a commission of the UN Economic and Social Council which can "carry out a thorough study of the situation or . . . name an ad hoc committee to investigate" them (Department, 1989, p. 150). Similar regional commissions have been set up in other parts of the world.
As the composition of the General Assembly changed, the UN Commission on Human Rights began to display partisan bias and to employ a double standard. According to Meisler, the resolution which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1975 condemning Zionist Racism made the UN look "like a warren of Third World crazies" (1995, p. 218). Abuses of Chile, Israel, Rhodesia and South Africa's apartheid were condemned, but the abuses of Arab and other terrorists were ignored or downplayed. Novak, the American representative to the Commission, told it in 1981 that "lies destroy human rights far more effectively than assassins or bombthrowers . . . The darkness of Orwellian doublespeak swirls over precious achievements of the human spirit" (1982, pp. 496-497).
The European Commission on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg did some impressive work in remedying abu...