{"id":18308,"date":"2018-10-13T15:24:07","date_gmt":"2018-10-13T15:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18308"},"modified":"2018-10-13T15:24:07","modified_gmt":"2018-10-13T15:24:07","slug":"un-accused-of-letting-abusers-into-human-rights-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18308","title":{"rendered":"UN accused of letting ‘abusers’ into human rights council"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Bahrain, Cameroon and the Philippines were among a number of countries controversially elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday, sparking sharp criticism from rights groups and the United States.<\/p>\n

Around a third of seats on the 47-member council, based in Geneva, were open for slots lasting from 2019-2022. A 97-vote majority from the 193 nations that make up the UN’s General Assembly is needed for approval.<\/p>\n

For the first time since the council was created in 2006, each voting region agreed in advance on 18 candidates to be in the running for 18 seats – removing any competition.<\/p>\n

New members Bahrain, Cameroon, the Philippines, Somalia, Bangladesh and Eritrea were elected with between 160 and 178 votes – and immediately drew criticism from activists in Europe and North America dismissing them as “unqualified” due to their human rights records.<\/p>\n

“By putting forward serious rights violators and presenting only as many candidates as seats available, the regional groups risk undermining the council’s credibility and effectiveness,” New York-based Human Rights Watch, said.<\/p>\n

Louis Charbonneau, the group’s UN director, called the vote “ridiculous” and said on Twitter it “makes mockery of (the) word ‘election.'”<\/p>\n

At the start of the voting session, the General Assembly’s president, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, noted that every member state is allowed to apply for a seat.<\/p>\n

Her spokesman later declined to directly address the criticism, but instead noted: “It’s clear that the world expects that members of international bodies will abide to a certain set of standards of behaviour consistent with the bodies they have been elected to.”<\/p>\n

Five of the new members were from Africa, five from Asia, two from eastern Europe, three from Latin America and the Caribbean, and three from western Europe.<\/p>\n

The United States pulled out of the council in June, calling the organisation a “hypocritical” body that “makes a mockery of human rights,” in particular in regard to its stance on Israel.<\/p>\n

Nikki Haley, who this week announced her resignation as US ambassador to the UN, said Friday’s vote demonstrates why the US was right to withdraw.<\/p>\n

“Yet again, countries with poor human rights records ran uncontested. This lack of standards continues to undermine the organization,” she said.<\/p>\n

“The United States will continue to support reforms that would make the Human Rights Council credible.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bahrain, Cameroon and the Philippines were among a number of countries controversially elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday, sparking sharp criticism from rights groups and the United States. Around a third of seats on the 47-member council, based in Geneva, were open for slots lasting from 2019-2022. A 97-vote majority from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}