By the Numbers: the UNHRC vote on Goldstone

Posted by monsieurginger on November 4, 2009; This entry is filed under Israel.

I know it’s a bit late, but here it is …

Being a numbers oriented person, I divided the UNHRC members into 3 groups to better explain its vote on the Goldstone report. The first group (A), the countries that voted against the resolution endorsing the Goldstone report and those that refused to vote summed up to 8 UNHRC members. The second group (B) were countries that abstained or were not present for the vote totaling 13 UNHRC members. And lastly, the 25 UNHRC members (C) that voted for the resolution.

Then, I used Freedom House’s 2009 Freedom Index average rating of each country, summed them up into their 3 groups, and got the average of each group. Free countries have a rating between 1 and 2.5, partly free countries have a rating between 3 and 5, and not free countries have a rating between 5.5 and 7.

Group A had an average rating of 1.25, with the worst rating attributed to Ukraine with 2.5 . Group B had an average rating of 2.77 with countries ranging any where from 1 to 6. Group C had an average rating of 3.82. Remember, higher the rating, the worst it is.

Freedom House gave Israel a rating of 6 in the Territories, and 1.5 in Israel proper.

5 Comments

  1. the sad red earth » The “Commission” Rules November 5th, 2009 at 11:41 am

    [...] has gone a little deeper: I divided the UNHRC members into 3 groups to better explain its vote on the Goldstone report. The [...]

  2. iKibbitz » UNHRC pies November 5th, 2009 at 9:11 pm

    [...] I posted about my findings here on the UNHRC vote on the resolution endorsing the Goldstone report. Here are the 3 blocs [...]

  3. John November 6th, 2009 at 4:06 pm

    1 – Israel 1.5
    2 – the US 1
    3 – Germany 1
    4 – Holland 1
    5 – Canada 1
    6 – Australia 1
    7 – Hungary 1
    8 – the Czech Republic 1
    9 – The Netherlands 1
    10 – Panama 1.5
    11 – Poland 1
    12 – Slovakia 1
    13 – The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 3
    14 – Ukraine 2.5
    15 – Italy 1.5

    1.33

    I couldn’t find online the other 3 countries that were in favor but it doesn’t look like the score is 2.77. That number seems way off. Can you list out the details of your calculations?

    I’d also looking for the “Arab bloc” states to do their average freedom index, since they are the ones pushing this.

    If you could do that, that’d be great… I’d love to see the data myself because my numbers aren’t adding up with yours.

    Thanks

    John

  4. monsieurginger November 6th, 2009 at 4:53 pm

    Hello John,

    I used the UNHRC vote on the Goldstone report from a couple weeks ago.

    Later today, I’ll publish the UN General Assembly results using the same methods. The 18 countries that voted against the resolution in the UNGA are:

    1 Australia 1
    2 Canada 1
    3 Czech Republic 1
    4 Germany 1
    5 Hungary 1
    6 Israel 1.5
    7 Italy 1.5
    8 Marshall Islands 1
    9 Micronesia 1
    10 Nauru 1
    11 Netherlands 1
    12 Palau 1
    13 Panama 1.5
    14 Poland 1
    15 Slovakia 1
    16 Macedonia 3
    17 Ukraine 2.5
    18 US 1
    23
    avg 1.28

    Countries that voted against or refused to vote in the UNHRC vote on the resolution:
    1 Hungry 1 N
    2 Italy 1.5 N
    3 Netherlands 1 N
    4 Slovakia 1 N
    5 Ukraine 2.5 N
    6 US 1 N
    7 France 1 DV
    8 UK 1 DV
    10
    avg. 1.25

  5. iKibbitz » By the Numbers: UNGA vote on the Goldstone report November 6th, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    [...] the method I introduced yesterday to quantify the UNHRC vote on the Goldstone report, here are the results on the recent vote in the [...]

Leave a Reply