Russia Seeks To Regain Seat On UN Human Rights Council After Being Suspended Last Year For ‘Systematic Abuses’

Russia is seeking to regain its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council in a vote on October 10 in the UN General Assembly, which voted last year to suspend Moscow from the council after its invasion of Ukraine.

The 193-member assembly will elect 15 members for the 2024-2026 term to the Geneva-based council from a slate of candidates put forward by the UN’s five regional groups. Russia is competing against Albania and Bulgaria for two seats allotted to the East European regional group.

In April 2022, less than two months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the General Assembly voted to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council over “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” by invading Russian troops in Ukraine. The U.S.-initiated resolution passed with 93 votes in favor, 24 against, and 58 abstentions.

The October 10 vote at UN headquarters in New York will take place by secret ballot, testing Russia’s contention that it has support in developing countries weary of the West’s billions of dollars in support of Ukraine.

Ferit Hoxha, Albania’s ambassador’s to the UN, who has sharply criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has said the UN General Assembly “has an important choice” to “demonstrate that it is not ready to take an arsonist for a firefighter.”

“Aggressors of their neighbors, killers of innocent people, deliberate destroyers of civil infrastructure, ports and grain silos, those who deport children and take pride in doing so, those who use torture and sexual violence as weapons, those who blatantly disrespect the human rights law have no place on the Human Rights Council,” Hoxha recently told a Security Council session.

U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood has told the Security Council that Russia’s re-election to the Human Rights Council “while it openly continues to commit war crimes and other atrocities would be an ugly stain that would undermine the credibility” of the UN.

Moscow’s UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, has accused the United States of leading a campaign to prevent Russia’s return to the council.

“The main phobia of our American colleagues today is electing Russia to the Human Rights Council,” Nebenzya told a Security Council meeting called by Ukraine to discuss last week’s strike by a Russian missile on a Ukrainian soldier’s wake in the village of Hroza that killed more than 50 people.

In the October 10 election, the only other competitive race is in the Latin America and Caribbean group in which Cuba, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Peru are competing for three seats.

In the other regional races, which are not competitive, the Asian group put up China, Japan, Kuwait and Indonesia for four seats; the African group chose Burundi, Malawi, Ghana, and Ivory Coast for four seats; and the Western group has France and the Netherlands seeking two seats.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on General Assembly members to oppose the candidacies of Russia and China.

“Every day, Russia and China remind us by committing abuses on a massive scale that they should not be members of the UN Human Rights Council,” Louis Charbonneau, UN director at HRW, said in an October 5 statement.

HRW said Russian forces in Ukraine continue to commit “apparent war crimes, including unlawful attacks and mistreatment of prisoners, and crimes against humanity, including torture, summary executions, and enforced disappearances against civilians.”

The watchdog said China’s rights record should also disqualify it from the Human Rights Council, adding that discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the western region of Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity.

The rights group said Cuba and Burundi have also committed systematic human rights violations.

The Geneva-based Human Rights Council was created in 2006 to replace a commission discredited because of some members’ poor rights records. But the new council soon came to face similar criticism, including that rights abusers sought seats to protect themselves and their allies.

The council reviews the human rights records of all countries periodically, appoints independent investigators to examine and report on issues like torture, and situations in countries like North Korea and Iran.

In last year’s election, Venezuela, South Korea, and Afghanistan lost contested races, but countries, including Vietnam and Sudan, which have been accused of having poor human rights records, won seats.

With reporting by AP and AFP