UN slammed for electing ‘unqualified’ members to Human Rights Council

The UN on Friday came under fire from several rights groups and activists, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), for picking a number of notorious violators to its Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

According to reports, Bahrain, Cameroon, the Philippines, Somalia, Bangladesh and Eritrea were among the countries elected on Friday as new members of the 47-member UN Human Rights Council after securing the minimum 97-vote majority from the 193 nations that make up the UN General Assembly.

For the first time in the council's history, the five voting regions had only put forward as many candidates as there were seats available, thus removing any competition.

The election immediately sparked criticism from activists across the world, rejecting the picks as “unqualified” over their human rights records.

Louis Charbonneau, HRW's UN director, called the vote "ridiculous" and said it "makes mockery of (the) word 'election.'"

In response to the criticisms, a spokesman for the General Assembly's president later said, "It's clear that the world expects that members of international bodies will abide to a certain set of standards of behavior consistent with the bodies they have been elected to."

Human Rights Watch strongly criticized the election of Bahrain, citing its imprisonment of major defenders of human rights such as Nabeel Rajab, who has served several years in prison after playing a key role in the country’s 2011 uprising.

HRW also highlighted the human rights record of the Philippines, calling the Filipino president’s crackdown on illicit drugs “a killing frenzy that has left thousands dead”.

The group also lashed out at the election of Eritrea for its “persecution and imprisonment of government critics” and Cameroon for its government’s “grave abuses” in its Anglophone region.

Other advocacy groups like UN Watch, the Human Rights Foundation and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights also warned the results of the elections could severely undermine the council’s credibility.

SS