Zimbabwe chosen to head UN economic commission

Zimbabwe has won approval to head a key United Nations body charged with promoting economic progress and environmental protection.

The appointment comes despite protests from some Western countries and human rights groups.

The Commission on Sustainable Development voted last night on the new chair after its current high-level session ended and its new session officially began, UN officials said.

The vote was 26-21, plus three abstentions, announced Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, the vice chair of the commission.

The chair traditionally rotates among regions of the world and it is Africa’s choice this year.

The continent has chosen Zimbabwe as its candidate, and the government has nominated Francis Nhema, the minister of environment and tourism, to chair the commission.

President Robert Mugabe, an 83-year-old who has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence from Britain in 1980, has been criticised by the West and domestic opponents for repression, corruption, acute food shortages and gross economic mismanagement that has driven inflation above 2,000% – the highest in the world.

Mugabe has acknowledged that police used violent methods against opposition supporters.

“We’re very disappointed in the election of Zimbabwe as chair,” said the US representative to the commission Dan Reifsnyder, deputy assistant secretary for environment and science at the State Department.

“We really think it calls into question the credibility of this organisation to have a representative from a country that has decimated its agriculture, that used to be the breadbasket of Africa and can’t now feed itself.”

The newly elected chairman dismissed reporters’ questions last night about his country’s international standing and capacity to hold such a position in a global body.

“I think it’s not time to point fingers,” said Nhema. “There is never a perfect method, it’s always a method which is appropriate to each country. So it’s important not only to look at Zimbabwe but to look at each other and see what we can learn.”

US officials said the commission deals with rural development and sustainable agriculture and Zimbabwe is no role model on those themes.

Mugabe’s government disrupted the agriculture-based economy in 2000 with violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms, part of a programme to redistribute land to poor blacks.

Several European nations have also called Zimbabwe’s candidacy inappropriate.

Yesterday, the Pan African Parliament, a body of the African Union, voted to send a mission to Zimbabwe to investigate alleged human rights abuses “relating to the arrests and detention, assault and murder of political activists and members of the media”.

“Zimbabwe is hardly a model of good governance or sustainable development or even responsible leadership,” said Benjamin Chang, deputy spokesman for the US Mission to the United Nations, before the vote. “Our concern is that its potential chairmanship would undermine the commission’s credibility.”

Jennifer Windsor, executive director of the human rights group Freedom House, said before the vote that it was “preposterous” for Zimbabwe to lead any UN body.

Freedom House is an independent nongovernmental organisation that has monitored political rights and civil liberties in Zimbabwe since 1980.

She said Mugabe’s government “clearly has nothing but scorn for the UN’s founding principles of human rights, security and international law”.

The Commission on Sustainable Development was established by the General Assembly in December 1992 to ensure effective follow-up of the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in June that year and implementation of key environmental and development agreements.

The commission meets annually in New York, and its current session that opened on Wednesday is focusing on energy for sustainable development, industrial development, air pollution and climate change.