UNITED NATIONS: The United States was reelected yesterday to another three-year term on the UN Human Rights Council in the only contested election for the organization’s top human rights body.
The US was competing with four Western countries for three seats on the council. Germany and Ireland were also elected by the 193-member General Assembly.
African, Asian, Eastern European and Latin American countries put forward uncontested slates, meaning candidates were virtually certain of winning seats on the 47-member council.
Several human rights groups have criticized a number of the candidates as unqualified, including ones from Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Venezuela.
The five Western nations competing for seats — the US, Germany, Greece, Ireland and Sweden — were all deemed qualified by the rights groups.
Argentina, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Estonia, Ethiopia, Gabon, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Montenegro, Pakistan, South Korea, Sierra Leone, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela were also elected yesterday to three-year terms beginning Jan. 1, 2013.
The Human Rights Council was created in March 2006 to replace the UN’s widely discredited and highly politicized Human Rights Commission. But the council has also been widely criticized for failing to change many of the commission’s practices, including putting much more emphasis on Israel than on any other country and electing candidates accused of serious human rights violations.
Former President George W. Bush’s administration boycotted the council when it was established because of its repeated criticism of Israel and its refusal to cite flagrant rights abuses in Sudan and elsewhere. But in 2009, then newly elected President Barack Obama sought to join the council, saying the US wanted to help make it more effective.
In that contest, the US was elected on an uncontested slate winning 167 votes, far more than the 97-vote majority needed.
Amnesty International’s UN representative, Jose Luis Dias, said member states “should return a blank ballot if they feel a candidate does not meet the high human rights standards expected of council members.”
Amnesty has written letters to all candidates urging them to demonstrate their commitment to human rights, he said.
For example, Dias said, the organization has called on Ethiopia to instruct the security services to remove barriers to the work of human rights defenders and journalists and has highlighted the United Arab Emirates’ 2010 Supreme Court ruling upholding a husband’s right to “discipline his wife and children, provided that this left no visible marks.” The African candidates are Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya and Sierra Leone.
The Asian Group candidates are Japan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. The Eastern European Group candidates are Estonia and Montenegro, and the Latin American and Caribbean Group candidates are Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela.
US reelected to UN Human Rights Council seat
