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Elections to the UN Human Rights Council

Bangladesh and 17 Asian countries were vying for 13 Asia-region seats in this week`s elections to the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), held in New York. The election to the newly established council, which will replace the 60-year old UN Commission on Human Rights, was scheduled to begin in the UN General Assembly Hall.

The member states of the United Nations were also to elect 13 members from Africa, six from Eastern Europe, eight from the Latin American and Caribbean region and seven from Western Europe and others. Fourteen African, 13 Eastern European, 11 Latin American and Caribbean and nine countries from other parts of the world are contesting for their respective quota.

The system of assigning memberships in UN human rights bodies has generally been distributed based on equitable geographic distribution. This flawed set-up has frequently resulted in non-democratic, obviously human-rights violating countries chairing the Human Rights Council, such hypocrisy on a continuing basis is one of the major issues championed by the United States and other countries in their quest for United Nations reform.