#HRCelections2023: it's time to elect new members

The Human Rights Council is the main UN body in charge of human rights. At the Human Rights Council, States demonstrate to their peers that they are committed to protecting human rights. Together they discuss and tackle some of the worst human rights crises in the world and, where necessary, hold rights violators to account.

The Council consists of 47 states who represent the five “UN regions”: African States (13 seats), Asia-Pacific States (13 seats), Latin American and Caribbean States (8 seats), Western European and other States (7 seats) and Eastern European States (6 seats). 

If you want to know more about the Human Rights Council please check out this video: 

Roughly a third of the members change each year. Elections take place every October in New York.

The members are elected by the 193 states in the General Assembly. Candidates are expected to put forward voluntary pledges and commitments on what they will achieve as members. This should inform the decision of other States to support them in the elections.

Countries are not obliged to vote for all of the candidates. They can still not vote for a candidate country (even in a closed slate). They should vote with reflection, not in haste or in exchange for favours or political influence. They should only vote for the most committed candidates.

The countries elected will serve three-year terms beginning on 1 January 2024. 

This year the candidate States are:

• African States: Côte d’Ivoire, Burundi, Malawi, Ghana (4 candidates for 4 seats. closed slate)
• Asia and the Pacific States: Kuwait, China, Indonesia, Japan (4 candidates for 4 seats, closed slate)
• Latin America and Caribbean States: Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic, Cuba (4 candidates for 3 seats)
• Western Europe and other States: The Netherlands and France (2 candidates for 2 seats: closed slate)
• Central and Eastern Europe States: Albania, Bulgaria and Russia (3 candidates for 2 seats)

Candidates must be member states of the UN. Through membership of the Council, they commit themselves to “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights,” and to fully cooperate with the Council and its mechanisms. 

None of the candidate countries has a perfect human rights record: all need to do better and can do so by working with civil society, including by developing time-bound pledges and commitments on what they propose to achieve. According to the HRC membership criteria, three candidates stand out as manifestly unsuitable for membership on the Human Rights Council: China, Russia and Burundi. 

ISHR has published ‘scorecards’ for States seeking election to the UN Human Rights Council for 2024-2026 to help inform voting States’ decisions in the upcoming election. The scorecards offer a quick ‘at-a-glance’ objective comparison of the human rights record of each candidate through criteria such as focusing on their cooperation with human rights bodies such as the Council, their support for civil society, their engagement with UN Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures, among others. Check them out. 

We want all candidates to commit to improve their human rights records and UN member states to vote only for the candidates that uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights and fully cooperate with the UN. This year, Russia, China and Burundi are candidates that are clearly unfit to sit at the Human Rights Council.

We want elections to be more competitive. 

This year, three of the five slates are competitive and have more candidates than there are seats available. States can still prevent Russia and Burundi from joining the Human Rights Council by voting for one of the other candidates seeking election within their respective slates.

Despite our joint call for competitive elections, two other regional group presented a ‘clean slate’ (one of which includes China) where the number of candidate States is equal to the number of available seats. All candidates in these slates will ultimately get elected. 

This again demonstrate the importance of having competitive slates. ISHR continues to call on all regional groups going forward to ensure, as a matter of principle, competitive slates; to present more candidacies than the available seats; to encourage more States to present their candidacy; for all candidates to announce their candidacies with sufficient time for voting States and civil society to properly consider their candidacies; and in voting, for all States to commit to making human rights paramount in Council elections, rather than political considerations. All UN regional groups of member States should resist withdrawing candidacies to elections that are competitive.

In the present election, we can still make a difference by influencing the number of votes received by each candidate, which can  provide an indication of their legitimacy as a Human Rights Council member.  

ISHR considers that none of the candidates has a perfect human rights record: they all need to do better. 

However, and according to the HRC membership criteria, three candidates stand out as manifestly unsuitable for membership on the Human Rights Council: China, Russia and Burundi. 

• Following the invasion of Ukraine and numerous reports of large-scale atrocities, the General Assembly of the UN suspended Russia’s membership of the HRC in April 2022. In April 2023, the Russian government passed a law that criminalises any assistance to and cooperation with international bodies such as the UN. The Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, which investigates all alleged violations and abuses of human rights, violations of international humanitarian law and related crimes in the context of the aggression against Ukraine by Russia, concluded that Russia is directly responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against President Putin and other high ranking government officials. The Civicus Monitor, which tracks the conditions of civic space worldwide, ranks Russia as a closed country for civil society. 

• China is considered by the UN Secretary-General as a country that engages in a pattern of reprisals against human rights defenders engaging with the UN and is one of the top three perpetrators of reprisals globally. In 2024, we will commemorate the death of Cao Shunli, a Chinese women human rights defender detained in September 2013 by Chinese authorities while en route to the UN in Geneva and who died 6 months later in custody as a result of detention conditions. Her case is just the tip of the iceberg of at least 30 cases of reprisals documented by the UN Secretary General since 2010. In an OHCHR report released in August 2022, the High Commissioner concluded that the arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims ‘may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity’. In addressing rights of Uyghurs and Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) referred for the first time ever a situation to the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect.The Civicus Monitor ranks China as a closed country for civil society. ISHR has extensively documented China’s lack of meaningful cooperation with the UN human rights mechanisms and unwillingness to recognise and address its human rights challenges.

• The UN Human Rights Council mandated Commission of Inquiry on Burundi considers that potential crimes against humanity have been committed in Burundi since April 2015 after the crackdown on dissent around the 2015 national election. The International Criminal Court subsequently opened an investigation to examine the alleged crimes against humanity. Burundi is one of the countries in the Africa Sub Saharan region where most acts of intimidation and reprisals have been recorded. In October 2022, the UN Human Rights Council adopted resolution 51/28 on the situation of human rights in Burundi where the Council called on Burundian authorities to refrain from acts of intimidation and reprisals against human rights defenders cooperating with the UN human rights mechanisms. Burundi has since signaled repeatedly that it wont allow visits to the country from the UN Special Rapporteur on Burundi to monitor and document the human rights situation. In July 2023, its representatives walked out of the country’s review by the UN Human Rights Committee saying it objected to the presence of civil society members in attendance. The Civicus Monitor ranks Burundi as a country where civil society is repressed. In 2022, the authorities lifted some restrictions on media and civil society but killings, disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrests against human rights defenders and journalists were documented by international and Burundian rights groups throughout 2022. 

Russia, China and Burundi are not fit to sit at the Human Rights Council. UN member States are not obliged to vote for all candidates, they can still not vote for a candidate country (even in a closed slate). They must only vote for candidates that uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights and fully cooperate with the UN. 

Check out the video created by our HRCNet coalition which explains the importance of the election and how civil society can participate: