UN Update: Goldstone Vote Deferred
Posted on: October 5, 2009

by Noah Shack
Government Relations Research Associate, Canada-Israel Committee

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution on the Goldstone Report has been deferred to its next session in hopes of “giving more time for a broad based and comprehensive consideration” of the report’s conclusions. Following a failure to reach a compromise, the hope is to build greater international consensus for a resolution which had been opposed by the EU and US.

On behalf of the resolution’s cosponsors, Pakistan moved that the vote be deferred to the 13th session of the UNHRC which takes place in March. The Palestinian delegation supported this decision to stop passage of the resolution.

The US is claiming that it effectively pressed the Palestinians to withdraw their support from the resolution’s adoption, precipitating the deferral. The resolution co-sponsors are claiming that they are reasonable and amenable to compromise and that given the historic importance of this report, a consensus is preferable, even though they hold in the majority at the UNHRC and could pass the resolution regardless.

Of note amid the spin is an Al Jazeera report in which the Palestinian delegation to the UNHRC concedes that “current attempts to renew negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians would be severely impacted by an insistence that the vote be held at this stage.” Essentially, the Palestinians are on record stating that the Goldstone Report is counterproductive for peace.

The deferral means that Goldstone’s recommendations will not be forwarded along to the General Assembly and Security Council for further action at this time.