China, Saudi Arabia and Russia are poised to join the United Nations Human Rights Council, raising alarms among rights groups, who say the countries are among the world\u2019s \u201cworst rights violators\u201d.<\/p>\n
The UN General Assembly is expected to hold elections on Tuesday for 15 seats in the 47-nation council, with the new members serving for three years from January 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cElecting these dictatorships as UN judges on human rights is like making a gang of arsonists into the fire brigade,\u201d Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, an independent human rights group based in Geneva, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cSerial rights abusers should not be rewarded with seats on the Human Rights Council,\u201d said Louis Charbonneau, UN director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia was previously on the council until 2019. China, which is under fire over its treatment of ethnic Uighurs in the far western region of Xinjiang and its imposition of a National Security Law in Hong Kong, could also return as a member.<\/p>\n
HRW said both countries had a history of using their seats in the council \u201cto prevent scrutiny of their abuses and those by their allies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not good for human rights or for the rights council when the worst rights violators get elected,\u201d Charbonneau said.<\/p>\n
Only last month, dozens of nations condemned Saudi Arabia before the council over serious rights violations and demanded accountability for the murder Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post newspaper columnist who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.<\/p>\n
The council also alleged other serious rights violations in Saudi Arabia, including reports of torture, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances and HRW noted the Saudi-led coalition also continues to commit war crimes against civilians in Yemen<\/p>\n
The conflict has killed more than 100,000 people and created the world\u2019s worst humanitarian disaster, with more than three million people internally displaced and two-thirds of the population relying on food aid for survival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China, Saudi Arabia and Russia are poised to join the United Nations Human Rights Council, raising alarms among rights groups, who say the countries are among the world\u2019s \u201cworst rights violators\u201d. The UN General Assembly is expected to hold elections on Tuesday for 15 seats in the 47-nation council, with the new members serving for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,1,6],"tags":[296,183,28,639,178,84,82,68,177,46,1335,638],"yoast_head":"\n