Sri Lanka, which has been strongly criticized for its human rights record, lost its bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, but four other countries with poor rights records won seats — Pakistan, Bahrain, Gabon and Zambia.
In a close race for two Western seats on the UN’s premier human rights body, France on Wednesday received 123 votes and Britain 120 votes — barely defeating Spain, which got 119 votes.
The hotly contested election for 15 seats on the 47-member council, whose performance has also come under attack, was the subject of intense lobbying. British Foreign Secretary David Milliband and French Human Rights Minister Rama Yade were in New York on Tuesday seeking support.
Candidates for the Geneva-based council are chosen by regional groups, and the entire 192-member General Assembly votes by secret ballot for new members by region.
In Wednesday’s election, Africa and Latin America had uncontested slates while Asia, Eastern Europe and the Western European and other States group had contested slates.
In the contest for four council seats from the Asian region, Japan, Bahrain, South Korea and Pakistan defeated Sri Lanka and East Timor. In the race for two seats in the Eastern European group, Slovakia and Ukraine defeated Serbia and the Czech Republic.
The four African candidates — Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana and Zambia — and the three Latin American candidates — Argentina, Brazil and Chile — all won easily since they had no formal opposition.
New York-based Freedom House, which promotes worldwide freedom, and Geneva-based UN Watch, which monitors the world body’s performance based on its Charter, evaluated the 20 candidates for the 15 council seats on their records of promoting human rights.
Their report gave negative ratings to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Gabon and Zambia, and “questionable” ratings to three candidates with mixed human rights records — Brazil, East Timor and Burkina Faso.
It gave “qualified” ratings to Ghana, Japan, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Argentina, Chile, France, Spain and Britain.
The Human Rights Council was created in March 2006 to replace the UN’s widely discredited and highly politicized Human Rights Commission.
But the council has been widely criticized for failing to change many of the commission’s practices, including putting more emphasis on Israel’s rights abuses than on any other country.
The US was virtually alone in voting against the establishment of the council, arguing that the new body was only marginally better and would not prevent rights-abusing countries from membership.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS