The UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee is all set to release a report that says that China is on its way to breaking up multilateral organisations that were set up on shared values of peace and prosperity after World War 2. The report, set to release today on 17th June, says that China is attempting to influence organisations like WTO, WHO, Interpol, UNHCHR and others.
The UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee is made up of 11 MPs who are meant to scrutinise the foreign affairs of the UK. The report specifically says that if countries like the UK don’t act against the corrosive influence of China and Russia, then there is a real chance that democratic states will lose their multilateral organisations to authoritative states like China. Hinting at several institutions being used by China for their own means, the Parliamentary Panel said that authoritarian states like China have displayed no interest in upholding the shared values of these organisations and they are exerting their control over strategically important organisations to fundamentally redefine the values on which these organisations are based on.
The report further said that China was using economic leverage to get these organisations to back their positions and endorse their candidates. “China uses the organisations to shift policies away from the cooperations the organisations were created to promote”, the report says.
The report says that 6 organisations are being wrongly influenced by China. They named, The World Health Organisation, the World Trade Organisation, Interpol, the United Nations Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The report specifically mentioned WHO as being influenced by China and also the Human Rights organisations. It further said that if countries like the UK do not align with like-minded countries and vote against autocratic states (hinting at China) then these organisations run the risk of being taken over by countries like China and other private donors.
It is pertinent to note here that as the UK parliamentary panel very categorically hints at China influencing these organisations, it could explain the increased attempted interference of such organisations in India’s internal matters.
It must be remembered that in May 2021, the UNHRC rapporteur had attempted to interfere in a case where Prashant Bhushan, a serial PIL filer who finds himself on the wrong side of India’s interest on almost every occasion, had filed a case in the Supreme Court demanding the prevention of the deportation of Rohingya illegal migrants from Jammu and Kashmir.
At that time, the Jammu and Kashmir government had come forward and taken umbrage to the Supreme Court allowing the intervention of the UNHRC rapporteur saying that the court should be upholding domestic laws without allowing intervention of foreign entities, also, saying that the court cannot force the government to accept international conventions that have not been signed for a reason. After hearing this argument, a three-judge bench led by CJI SA Bobde refused to hear for now the rapporteur, represented in court by senior advocate CU Singh.
Interestingly, as we had reported earlier, the UNHRC had condemned India for deporting 5 Rohingyas while it maintained a stoic silence when Saudi Arabia was busy deporting hundreds of them.
Last year, the United States quit the UNHRC calling it a “cesspool of political bias”. Nikki Haley, the then US envoy to the UN called the institution “hypocritical” and that it “makes a mockery of human rights”.
