U.N. officials highlighted human rights as the top priority for the New Year as the world body commits to organizational reform.

First on the United Nation's restructuring agenda is the creation of a new U.N. human rights council. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, now in his last year as leader, moved human rights ahead of budget and management reform and a post-war peace-building commission on the priority list, reported the New York Times.

In his end-of-year press conference at the U.N. Headquarters, Annan said he was hopeful to establish an effective, impartial Human Rights Council early in the New Year, before the regular session of the existing Commission on Human Rights, which opens in Geneva in March.

The new council would replace the 53-member Human Rights Commission, which has been criticized as ineffective and corrupt, allowing such governments as Sudan and Zimbabwe to have membership.

"The reason highly abusive governments flock to the commission is to prevent condemnation of themselves and their kind, and most of the time they succeed," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "If you're a thug, you want to be on the committee that tries to condemn thugs."

Among the human rights that the nations of Sudan and Zimbabwe have been reportedly violating is the right to religion – a right noted in Article 18 of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights and which Christian and other faith leaders have labeled as the "first freedom" that lays the basis for all other human rights.

“This right,” Article 18 states, “includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

According a report on international religious freedom released in November 2005 by the U.S. Department of State, the Sudanese Government continued to place many restrictions on non-Muslims, non-Arab Muslims, and Muslims from tribes or sects not affiliated with the ruling party despite guarantees of freedom of religion in both the Constitution of 1998 and the draft of a new constitution to replace it.

In Zimbabwe, the report noted that the Government continued to be critical of and harass religious leaders who spoke out against the Government's ongoing campaign of violent intimidation against perceived opponents. Church leaders and members who criticized the Government faced arrest and detention.

"For the great global public, the performance or nonperformance of the Human Rights Commission has become the litmus test of U.N. Renewal," said Mark Malloch Brown, chief of staff to Annan, in emphasizing the importance of human rights.

Other top priorities outlined for 2006 are promoting peace, including new initiatives for fighting terrorism and the spread of the world's deadliest weapons, and combating poverty and disease.

"If there’s one thing I would like to hand over to my successor when I leave office next year, it is that it should be a U.N. that is fit for the many varied tasks and challenges we are asked to take on today,"

Source: The Christian Post