The nomination of Libya as the country in charge of the UN's human rights business next year has not pleased everyone. Although its absolute ruler, Colonel Gadafy, who once sponsored the murder of British citizens, now cuts such a fine figure of a dictator that he has been honoured with a visit from our own Mr O'Brien of the Foreign Office, sticklers for human rights insist that an oppressor of his stature is not really the ideal person to convert the rest of us to freedom of speech, freedom of association, and all the other freedoms which remain, at the time of writing, prohibited in Libya. Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based campaigning group, was the first to denounce Libya's nomination by the African regional group (whose turn it is to appoint the human rights "chair"). "Countries with a dreadful rights records should never be in charge of chairing the commission on human rights," says Rory Mungoven, HRW's global advocacy director. "Libya's long record of human rights abuses clearly does not merit such a reward."  And it's true, it would be hard to take any envoy of Gadafy's very seriously on things such as the presumption of innocence, peaceful assembly and freedom of thought - three of the subjects that preoccupied the commission at its last meeting, which was chaired by a Pole.  In fact, when you look at the commission's impressive A-Z of its concerns, from Adequate Housing to Xenophobia, by way of Executions, Terrorism and Women, there does not seem to be any area in which Libya can truly be said to show us the way. As O'Brien admitted this week: "We still have criticisms of Libya on human rights and foreign policy grounds. But it is moving away from being a pariah. Libya will be judged by its actions."  Only a year ago, for example, on the 32nd anniversary of his military coup, Gadafy released dozens of political prisoners, an act applauded by Amnesty International. One of them, Dr Omran Omar al-Turbi, had been arrested on suspicion of membership of an opposition group called the National Front for the Salvation of Libya and held without charge or trial since 1984. A most generous and celebratory gesture on Gadafy's part, but little comfort to hundreds of remaining political prisoners, many of whom, Amnesty reports, have also been held without charge or trial.  Naturally, in the absence of a free press, and with Gadafy's "purification committees" ever on the qui vive for seditious thinking, it is hard to know just how far Libya has moved away, in O'Brien's words, from being a pariah. But I would put it at around two inches. Pick any line from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the chances are that Libya, or at least Gadafy, its Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution, takes a contrary view.  Article 9: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile." See above. Arbitrary arrests without trial remain a Libyan speciality. Article 18: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion." In Libya, as the International Federation for Human Rights (an NGO granted special consultative status by the UN) reported earlier this year: "There is absolutely no scope for freedom of opinion, thought, assembly and association... The government has subjected opponents within the country and abroad, as well as their families and relatives, to harassment, pressure, threats and physical liquidation, in addition to the widespread resort to the demolition of houses as a form of reprisal."  Article 21: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..." Not in Libya, it shan't. The Libyan League for Human Rights, based in Geneva, points this out from time to time. There has not been a free election in Libya since Gadafy came to power. Earlier this year the league wrote, once again, to the UN's outgoing human rights commissioner Mary Robinson, informing her of more prisoners of conscience and objecting to Libya's membership of the Commission on Human Rights. "The Libyan League for Human Rights is deeply concerned by this 'laissez faire...  laissez aller' attitude on the part of the high commissioner."  But Libya is not the only oppressive state to enjoy membership of this most easy-going of clubs. There are absolutely no criteria for entry. Many gentlemanly pariahs, entirely unabashed in their pariahdom, also participate in the earnest debates about gender equality, or enjoy the anti-colonial lectures delivered by their fellow pariahs. Syria, which was censured by Amnesty this week, having sentenced a human rights campaigner to five years' imprisonment, is part of the five-person bureau (headed by the chairman) which runs the business of the UNCHR. It is the bureau's responsibility to decide which countries, or subjects, should be subject to investigation by a UN rapporteur. And contrariwise, of course, which countries should not be so inspected.  If a Libyan takes over the chair next spring, he will find himself discussing liberty and fraternity with delegates from, among others, Guatemala, Algeria, Malaysia, Sudan and Zimbabwe - the last, a country for which Gadafy has a particularly strong affection. With such a motley membership, requiring such respect for cultural diversity, it is no wonder that when it comes to censuring the grossest violations of human rights, such as mass murder in China, unanimity so often escapes the commission. You have to see these things in context. Who, for example, is to say that the treatment of young offenders in Scandinavia is any less of an outrage than the stoning of a woman in Africa? Between them, the demands of cultural relativism and wily negotiating by the worst abusers, ensure that the work of the commission on human rights is so incoherent as to be almost worthless.  If the commission had any impact on human rights, if it evinced the faintest desire to be taken seriously, the emergence of Libya as its figurehead would, indeed, be a scandal. In its current shape, there is absolutely no reason to deny Robert Mugabe's boon companion his moment in the sun. At least, under a Libyan's chairmanship, the 59th session of the UCHR should be free of the ghastly, the unforgivable taint of neo-colonialism. <B>How Archer can be rehabilitated</B>  <BR>Martin Narey, director-general of the prison service has reassured us that, far from receiving special treatment, Lord Archer's Sundays at home in Grantchester, contract deals from his cell, job at a theatre in Lincoln, and permission to drive himself back and forth in his own BMW are an "absolutely normal" preparation for a return to civilian life. And who could deny that Lord Archer's sophisticated modus vivendi must demand a different kind of preparation from that required by the lowlier sort of lag? Unless his prison routine follows the schedule outlined below, he may never again be able fully to resume his place in society. 1. A third-rate Picasso to be placed adjacent to the prisoner's chamber pot, to prepare him for return to priceless art collection.  2. Sundays with Mary (planned to form part of society's retribution) to be replaced by drives around Shepherd's Market (map to be supplied if necessary) to prepare him for a return to civilian kerb-crawling.   3. Meetings with senior Tories ASAP, to ensure smooth return to campaigning for job as mayor of London. Fact-finding tour to NYC optional.  4. Elderly femme fatale to volunteer for congress in NCP car park, to prepare prisoner for return to customary sexual relations.  5. TV interviewer to be invited into prison, allowing prisoner to practise bullying and lies.  6. Ermine robes to replace prison clothing, as preparation for House of Lords, other inmates to be reminded that the occasional nod or bow will assist in Archer's gradual reintroduction to civilian life.