Global NGOs Reject Authoritarian Regimes’ Bids for UN Human Rights Posts

Overview of the session of the Human Rights Council during the speech of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Feb. 27, 2020. (Reuters/Denis Balibouse/File Photo)

Non-governmental groups have called on United Nations member states to oppose the admission of Afghanistan, Algeria, Sudan, Venezuela, and Vietnam to the Human Rights Council (UNHRC), citing “problematic” human rights records.

The U.N. General Assembly will hold elections for 14 new council members on Tuesday. A joint NGO report [pdf] released on Oct. 3 drew attention to the “unqualified” nations running for seats in the council.

These nations include Venezuela, which is running for re-election in the Latin America group, as well as Afghanistan and Vietnam—which are both vying for four vacant seats in the Asia-Pacific group.

Algeria and Sudan are also controversial candidates vying for four vacant seats in their regional group. United Nations Watch said both are “almost guaranteed to win” unless member states refuse to endorse candidates running on a clean slate.

The joint report states the five nations—all of which were rated as “not free” by Freedom House—were “unqualified” due to their “serious human rights violations” and diplomatic support for major rights violators abroad.

“It will be an insult to their political prisoners and many other victims—and a defeat for the global cause of human rights—if the UN helps gross abusers act as champions and global judges of human rights,” Hillel Neuer, executive director for United Nations Watch, said in a statement.

Afghanistan has been under Taliban control since last year, but the former government still holds the sole U.N. credentials to represent the country because the Taliban has not been recognized globally.

Admitting Afghanistan to the UNHRC would be “outrageous” given the council’s earlier condemnation of the Taliban’s mistreatment of women, the report states. The Taliban has denied women and girls the right to a full education.

“If Afghanistan wins election in October for the Human Rights Council, and if the U.N. eventually decides to recognize the Taliban, then the terrorist group would automatically inherit a seat on the world’s top human rights body,” it stated.

Two-thirds are Non-Democracies

Two-thirds of the UNHRC members are non-democracies, including China, Libya, Qatar, Cuba, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, and Venezuela.

Neuer said that non-democracies could no longer use their membership as “a shield of international legitimacy to cover up the abuses of their regime.”

“If our own democracies continue to disregard the election criteria by voting for abusers, then we should just scrap elections altogether, and make every country a member, as is the case in the General Assembly’s human rights committee,” he said.