(C) BRAZIL DEFENDS UNHRC VOTES ON LEBANON AND GAZA

C O N F I D E N T I A L BRASILIA 001772 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/22/2016 TAGS: PREL PHUM UNHRC BR SUBJECT: (C) BRAZIL DEFENDS UNHRC VOTES ON LEBANON AND GAZA REF: A. SECSTATE 136467 ¶B. BRASILIA 1680 (NOTAL) Classified By: Political Counselor Dennis W. Hearne, for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) ¶1. (C) Summary. Brazil defended its votes in favor of UN Human Rights Council (HRC) resolutions on Lebanon and Gaza when presented with demarche (reftel A). Marcia Adorno, the Foreign Ministry's chief of the Human Rights Division, told poloff on August 22 that Brazil opposes unbalanced resolutions, considered the August 11 resolution unbalanced, but she defended Brazil's vote in favor of it and said Brazil believes the Human Rights Council cannot be blind to the situation in Lebanon. She said Brazil wants to depoliticize the Council and has proposed a Global Human Rights Report to help achieve that goal. In the meantime, she said, Brazil wants the HRC to adopt the Universal Periodic Review. End summary. ¶2. (C) Marcia Adorno, chief of the Human Rights Division at the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, told poloff on August 22 that the HRC "cannot pretend it is not seeing" the situation in Lebanon, and defended Brazil's vote as a choice between inaction and support for an imperfect and unbalanced resolution that had merit because it created a fact finding mission. She insisted that, for Brazil, the resolution does not single out Israel, and said Brazil does not support resolutions on countries, but rather on situations. For this reason, she continued, Brazil has not supported resolutions identifying Cuba as a human rights violator, although it had supported resolutions on African countries. She admitted that it depends on the "political moment" and said that decisions of this type are made above her level. She said Brazil wants a balanced evaluation of any situation such as Lebanon and favors balanced resolutions. ¶3. (C) Adorno added that the (now defunct) Human Rights Commission had become a forum for attacks, while in Brazil's view the new HRC should be a forum to protect human rights. With that in mind, and to depoliticize the Council and promote human rights through technical cooperation, Brazil has proposed that the HRC prepare a Global Human Rights Report, but in its absence the next best thing would be the Universal Periodic Review, now under study in a working group. ¶4. (C) Comment: Adorno's admission of past inconsistencies in Brazil's HR voting record revealed a less than total conviction in her position. She was unconvincing in her position that she did not believe these votes erode the HRC, even as she admitted they were unbalanced. End comment. Sobel