Ahead of Wednesday’s elections for the UN Human Rights Council, activists called on the world body to oppose the candidacies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bolivia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ethiopia, deeming those states “unqualified” due to their poor records on respecting human rights at home, and in voting on UN resolutions concerning human rights.
The country ratings appear in a new joint report by a cross-regional coalition of three human rights groups, UN Watch in Switzerland, Human Rights Foundation in the U.S., and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights in Canada.
“Electing serial human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia and Qatar as UN judges on human rights is like making a gang of arsonists into the fire brigade,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, an independent non-governmental human rights organization based in Geneva.
“It will be slap in the face to their victims of human rights abuse - including political prisoners, abused migrant workers, and women subjected to a discriminatory guardianship system - if the UN makes gross abusers into global judges and guardians of human rights,” said Neuer.
“When the UN’s highest human rights body becomes a case of the foxes guarding the henhouse, the world’s victims suffer.”
Because there is no competition in the African and Latin American regional groups, with each fielding the same number of candidates as available seats, Bolivia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ethiopia are almost guaranteed to win, despite their poor records on human rights.
Fortunately, there is competition in the Asian Group, where Saudi Arabia and Qatar are vying against Cyprus, Marshall Islands, South Korea, and Thailand for five available seats. However, even if these four candidates are all elected, that still leaves one seat to be filled by either Saudi Arabia or Qatar.
“We need to hear the US and EU member states lead the call to oppose the worst abusers. So far, at least in the public arena, they have been silent.”
The report also listed Benin, Colombia, Gambia, Kenya, Mexico, Macedonia, and Thailand as having “questionable” credentials, due to problematic human rights and UN voting records that should be improved.
Currently, approximately two-thirds of UNHRC members are non-democracies, including China, Cuba, Algeria, Burundi, Eritrea, Somalia, and Vietnam.
CALL TO REFORM ELECTION SYSTEM
UN Watch is proposing a major reform to the election system. “If our own democracies continue to disregard the election criteria by voting for abusers,” said Neuer, “then we should just scrap elections altogether, and make every country a member, as is the case in the General Assembly’s own human rights committee. Non-democracies could no longer hold up their UNHRC election as a shield of international legitimacy to cover up the abuses of their regime.”
“Regrettably,” said Neuer, “the EU has not said a word about hypocritical candidacies that only undermine the credibility and effectiveness of the UN human rights system. By turning a blind eye as human rights violators easily join and subvert the council, leading democracies will be complicit in the world body’s moral decline.”
