70% of UN Human Rights Council Members Such as Eritrea Are Human Rights Violators & War Criminals

70% of UN rights council members are non-democracies, says watchdog

UN Watch director says electing genocidal and authoritarian regimes to panel ‘is like naming Al Capone’ to fight organized crime, makes it difficult for body to carry out positive work

The top United Nations human rights body started the year with a majority of its members defined as non-democratic countries and many accused of severe rights violations.

Only 14 members elected to the 47-member UN Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, are considered “free” countries by the rights group Freedom House, leaving 70 percent of slots occupied by nations designates as “partly free” or “not free.”

“When the world elects regimes like Eritrea, Somalia, China, Cuba, Pakistan, to its highest human rights body, that’s like naming Al Capone and his gang to fight organized crime. It’s a betrayal,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer in an interview with ILTV.

When such states are elected to the panel, “it’s very hard for the world to take it seriously, and it raises the question, how can they even implement mandates that are positive, like the inquiry created on Iran,” Neuer added, referencing a recently formed probe into unrest in the Islamic Republic sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini.

The Human Rights Council has 47 member states, which are elected to three-year terms by the UN General Assembly through direct and secret ballots.

Neuer noted in a tweet that countries with questionable human rights records such as Eritrea, Somalia,Sudan,Algeria,Qatar, Cuba,China,Vietnam, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Bangladesh are members of the council. All Islamic and Atheist nations.

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