Exclusive: Schabas’ own colleague, human rights icon Aryeh Neier, calls for him to quit UN Gaza prob

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74. Here's wiki...

Mandate of mission[edit]

On 3 January 2009, in response to the Gaza War, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference's executive committee asked the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to send a fact-finding mission to Gaza.[17] On 12 January, the council adopted Resolution S-9/1, deciding "to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission"[1] Upon being asked to lead the Mission, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson expressed disappointment with the mandate and refused to head the Mission for that reason. She stated that the resolution adopted by UN Human Rights Council was one-sided and "guided not by human rights but by politics". She later expressed full support for the report.[18] Richard Goldstone initially refused the appointment for the same reason, calling the mandate "biased" and "uneven-handed". In January 2011, Goldstone said that the UNHRC "repeatedly rush to pass condemnatory resolutions in the face of alleged violations of human rights law by Israel but fail to take similar action in the face of even more serious violations by other States. Until the Gaza Report they failed to condemn the firing of rockets and mortars at Israeli civilian centers".[19]

Following Goldstone's objection, the mandate was informally widened to cover activities by Palestinian militants as well, and this was the formulation quoted by the final report.[2][20] Its mandate was "to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after. Speaking at Brandeis University, Goldstone noted that the widened mandate was presented by the president of the UNHRC to a plenary session, where it did not encounter a single objection.[21] He later described as "tiresome and inept" allegations forwarded by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the mandate had not been broadened to cover violations by all parties.[22]

Despite Ambassador Martin Uhomoibhi's verbal commitment that there was no objection to the revised mandate,[23] the Human Rights Council never voted to revise the mandate, and resolution S-9/1 remained unchanged.[24]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Fact_Finding_Mission_on_the_Gaza_Conflict

Mary Robinson:

I am afraid the resolution is not balanced because it focuses on what Israel did, without calling for an investigation on the launch of the rockets by Hamas. This is unfortunately a practice by the Council: adopting resolutions guided not by human rights but by politics. This is very regrettable.