How the UN Human Rights Council promotes dictatorships over human rights

Last week, the United Nations held elections for seats on the UN’s esteemed Human Rights Council. Member states to this council are supposed to represent the nations which uphold and promote the highest standards of human rights.

But instead of electing the greatest protectors of human rights to the council, Turtle Bay chose to elect some of the world’s most oppressive regimes, including Qatar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. 

In fact, today, almost two-thirds of the membership of the Human Rights Council are non-democratic nations, such as China, Cuba and Sudan. These use their seats on the council to provide cover for their own widespread human rights abuses.

What’s more is that these human rights abusers cite their election to the world’s top human rights body as a false badge of international legitimacy and as fake proof of their commitment to human rights. 

For instance, just after being elected to a second consecutive term last Wednesday, Qatar’s permanent representative to the U.N. lauded his country’s achievement, calling it a reflection of “international appreciation for Qatar’s firm commitment to protecting and promoting human rights at the national and international levels.” 

Instead, the truth is the opposite. Qatar tragically exploits migrant workers, oppresses women through its guardianship system which denies them basic rights and is a major supporter of Hamas terrorism.

Based on this, it should be immediately obvious that the council has failed its mission to promote human rights and has rather become a mockery of its core principles. 

So how has this happened? How has the top body to protect human rights become the venue for dictatorships to trample them on the world stage? It all comes down to the broken election system.

It is immediately apparent that the election system itself is rigged through its closed slate system where the number of candidates equals the number of open seats. This facilitates human rights abusers gaining council seats through closed-door deals ensuring that they will run unopposed. 

This year, there was competition only in the Asian Group where six candidates vied for five available seats. As a result, Saudi Arabia rightfully lost the election. Qatar, however, was still elected from this group, indicating that reforms are needed. 

Furthermore, once elected, these violators get the opportunity to appoint their authoritarian friends to leadership positions. Last November, the Islamic Republic of Iran chaired the council’s Cuban-created Social Forum, an annual meeting ostensibly dedicated to human rights. 

As a result, the Islamic regime was given the opportunity to strut on the international stage as a respected and influential actor while simultaneously killing domestic protestors, imprisoning human rights defenders and sponsoring Hamas atrocities.

Unsurprisingly, allowing the worst violators of human rights to run the council has had dire consequences as powerful human rights abusers evade the council’s scrutiny of their human rights records. That’s why China, Cuba, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have never been the subject of a condemnatory resolution in the council’s history.

At the same time, 36 percent of the council’s country condemnations have been directed at Israel, the only Jewish state and the Middle East’s only democracy.

Furthermore, the system also affords human rights abusers the opportunity to uplift phony human rights “experts” known as special procedures who do the bidding of the repressive regimes which support them. 

For instance, one of the most notorious so-called experts is Alena Douhan, the Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures, a euphemism for Western sanctions against human rights violators like Russia and Syria. The mandate was created by The Non-Aligned Movement, an influential anti-Western bloc of 120 countries that boasts Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela among its members.

In May this year, Douhan became the first UN expert to be given access to visit Xinjiang when she made a propaganda visit to the region in China where the well-documented ethnic cleansing of the Uyghur population is occurring. 

At the same time, her office had received $200,000 from China. It’s, therefore, no surprise that her subsequent reports and videos portrayed the oppressed Uyghur Muslims as happy and that she refused to hold the Chinese government accountable for its crimes.

Meaningful reforms are needed so that the UN Human Rights Council can reclaim its role as a genuine defender of human rights, free from the influence of those who violate them. 

For starters, democracies should stop voting to elect human rights abusers to the council. They should also vocally oppose so-called human rights experts who use their mandate to erode fundamental rights.

Instead of propping up this flawed institution which makes a mockery of human rights, democracies that care about human rights should be leading the call for change.

Dina Rovner is the legal advisor of United Nations Watch, an independent human rights monitoring organization in Geneva, Switzerland.