Human Rights Council Election

The Human Rights Council is the United Nations’ body for addressing human rights violations. It replaces the former UN Commission on Human Rights. Whereas the Commission was a functional commission of ECOSOC, the Council holds the higher status of a subsidiary body to the General Assembly.[1]

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Background:

The newly established Human Rights Council has 47 members with staggered terms of three years. Election rules are based on the HRC’s founding resolution. Members are elected in a secret ballot by a majority of the General Assembly members, whether or not they are present and voting – in other words, an absolute majority. Currently that is 97 members. This allows for a lower threshold of support than a two-thirds majority. If any of the candidates fails to receive 97 positive votes, they must compete in a second round against any additional high-scoring candidates. This is also true for candidates who are not officially running but who receive write-in votes from GA members. Seats are distributed to each geographic region as follows:

Each membership term lasts for three years. Members can serve two consecutive terms but will not be eligible for immediate re-election after that, in order to prevent de facto permanent membership.

Criteria for membership:General Assembly Resolution 60/251 states that: “when electing members of the Council, Member States shall take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments thereto” (Paragraph 8, Resolution A/60/251). These are the only stated criteria for membership in the Council. The pledge states that the country will uphold international standards of human rights and enumerates actions undertaken by that state in advancing and protecting human rights. It typically includes a listing of their involvement in international institutions.

In addition, candidates must accept that they will be subjected to periodic peer-reviews of their human rights record if they gain a seat on the Council. Amnesty International has issued recommended pledges for candidate countries.

Recent Developments:

The current HRC members and their terms* are noted in the table below.

*The General Assembly elected the 47 members in May 2006. It then randomly assigned term expirations to each member to set up the staggered term system. Thus, those states whose membership expires in 2007 will have had only a one-year term, and those with 2008 expirations will have had only a two-year term.

A key question for this year was whether the United States would run for a seat, given its original opposition to the HRC and its decision not to run for election in 2006. In March 2007, the U.S. announced that again it would not seek election.

Coming Up:

The General Assembly election for fourteen members of the HRC is scheduled for May 17, 2007. Whereas last year several members were elected for one-year or two-year terms because it was the first election, this year members will be elected for the full three-year term (2008-2011). The newly elected members will take up their posts on June 19. For the fourteen open seats on the Council, fifteen member states have declared their candidacies. Four out of five of the regional groupings apparently have designated states to replace their current members on the Council, resulting in “clean slates”. A clean slate leaves voting member states with little if any choice in candidates. Instead of being selected for their human rights records, members will be chosen based on reciprocal voting arrangements made within each region. The group of Western European and Other States is the only region currently running a competitive race in this election. Thirteen of the fifteen candidates have included human rights pledges as part of their candidacy.

Related UNElections Monitors

• Issue 49 - March 10 - UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to Step Down in June
• Issue 27 - September 11 - States Begin Campaigning for HRC Membership, Vote Trading Underway
• Issue 16 - May 30 - Ban Appoints Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities
• Issue 11 - May 17 - Results of Human Rights Council Election
• Issue 10 - May 4 - Human Rights Council Elections May Not Be Fully Competitive
• Issue 3 - 14 November 2006 - Nominations Emerging for 2007 HRC Elections

[1] The status of the new Council is considered higher than that of the old Commission because of the greater power of the General Assembly as compared to ECOSOC.