On February 24, 2006, after lengthy negotiations, the UN General Assembly finally approved a resolution to replace the discredited Commission on Human Rights with a new inter-governmental body called the Human Rights Council (HRC or Council). The resolution (60/251) received 170 votes in favor, four against (the United States, Marshall Islands, Israel, and Palau) and three abstentions (Belarus, Iran and Venezuela). Headquartered in Geneva, the Council is “responsible for promoting the universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction of any kind and in a fair and equal manner.” While the UNHRC is undoubtedly an improvement over its predecessor, the Council’s track record throughout its first ten years shows that the UN still struggles to promote human rights objectively.
Article 7 of the resolution establishes 47 UN member states will be represented on the Council each elected directly and individually by secret ballot with the support of a majority of the General Assembly. Membership is based on geographical distribution among regional groups: Africa has 13; Asia has 13; Eastern Europe has 6; Group of Latin American and Caribbean has 8; and Western European and others are allotted 7. Each member state serves for three years with the possibility of only one re-election to a second three-year term.
Article 8 states that the participation at the Council is open to all members of the UN. When electing, however, the General Assembly should “take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments made thereto.” This is reiterated in Article 9 that states a member of the UNHRC shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights, shall fully cooperate with the Council and will be subject to examination by the Universal Periodic Review. Additionally, by a two-thirds majority, the General Assembly can suspend a country from the UNHRC that commits systematic violations of human rights.
Unfortunately, the reality of the Council stands in stark contrast to the ideals laid out in its founding charter. Between 2007 and 2017, three dictatorships who constantly violate human rights within their own borders—Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China—have spent more time on the UNHRC than any other country. The continued presence of the three dictatorships on the Council both undermines the effectiveness of the organization and proves that the standards and norms established by the General Assembly exist in name only.
Nevertheless, despite the flawed reality of the UNHRC, the Council has achieved some noteworthy progress. In response to Trump administration’s claims that it was considering dropping out of the Council, Human Rights Watch issued a statement: “The 47-member Human Rights Council has made a real difference on human rights issues worldwide. […] The council’s Universal Periodic Review has subjected all 193 UN member countries to human rights scrutiny twice since 2008.” Elaborating, Human Rights Watch continued, “[t]he Human Rights Council has adopted more than 1,350 country-specific or thematic resolutions since 2006, placing 30 governments under intense scrutiny.” While the positive impacts of the Council are undeniable, it is obvious that it could be strengthened if its members were all on the same page and held equally accountable.
Elections of the UNHRC between 2006 and 2016
In creating the UNHRC, UN member states proposed that a country could only be elected to the council with a two-thirds majority vote of the General Assembly. Unsurprisingly, countries with poor human rights records rejected the proposal. As the negotiations reached brink of failure, the Assembly accepted the proposition—put forward by the Argentinean representative—to make Council membership a simple-majority decision. The U.S. one of the harshest critics of the previous commission, anticipated that this would significantly undermine the efficiency of the organization and enable the participation of countries with histories of human rights violations. The U.S. representative voted against the creation to demonstrate disapproval.
While the concerns of the U.S. were reasonable, research has shown that a two-thirds majority would not have had the desired effect. The graph below shows how the three previously mentioned dictatorships would have entered the Council anyway, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, who was two votes shy of a two-thirds majority in 2006.
How is it possible that countries that deprive their own citizens from basic human rights are able to garner so much international acceptance? The answer brings us to a systemic problem facing the UN. Comprising 193 Member States, consolidated democracies are still outnumbered by democratic countries with poor institutions and authoritarian regimes. Moreover, true democracies do not coordinate their international policies regarding human rights policies as much as their authoritarian counterparts. The result is a negotiating disadvantage when it comes to cooperating and determining policies on matters related to human rights in multilateral forums.
Since democracies tend to be complicated (in terms of their bureaucratic structures, public opinion and foreign policy) it gives the advantage to authoritarian leaders that can better impose their will internally and coordinate with likeminded regimes, thus furthering their narrow foreign policy goals and perpetuating their hold on power in multilateral organizations like the UNHRC. The result is that they are better position to not just weaken the Council but also further their own interests within it.
The advantage held by authoritarian regimes in the international sphere is demonstrated by the success of China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia at the UNHRC. Each has been elected to the Council every time they applied for a seat. Conversely, several states such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, which lead the world in civil and political liberties, freedom of the press and transparency have shown only sparse interest in promoting human rights at the UN level and as a result have never made it onto the body supposedly to defend those rights internationally.
The UN is a partly free organization
To fully understand and evaluate respect for liberal democratic values within the United Nations and the allocation of power on its human rights body, we rely on the annual report “Freedom in the World” by Freedom House. The report tracks civil liberties and political rights in countries and territories around the world and classifies them by means of a scoring system, running from 1 to 7, divides countries into three categories: Free, Partly Free and Not Free. Free countries score between 1 and 2.5, Partly Free countries score between 3 and 5, and Not Free score between 5.5 and 7.
According to the latest edition, the average score of the UN and the UNHRC are pretty similar. UN members score an average of 3.38; the UNRCH scores 3.51 according to the Freedom House. On this scale, the UN and UNHRC could be ranked—on average—as Partly Free.
While the figure above shows a worrisome decline in freedom over the last 10 years in both organizations, the chart below illustrates how the number of countries in each category have been represented over time on the UNHRC since its inception. It is worth noting that, particularly in the last four years, liberal democracies have lost their advantage in the Council.
At least nine Not Free countries have always held seats on the Council and Free countries have never held more than 24 seats at the same time. 2011 was the year with the least participation of Free countries (18) and the most participation of Not Free countries (13)—Angola, Bahrain, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Gabon, Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, Qatar, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Nor does participation on the Council mean improvements in human rights. Our research reveals that most countries, especially those ranked as Partly Free or Not Free, have not made any progress toward liberal democracy while holding a seat on the UNHRC:
- Cuba and China, two of the longest serving member states, have maintained their rating of 6.5;
- Russia, which spent 9 out of 11 years in the UNHRC, deteriorated from 5.5 to 6.5—one of the sharpest declines of a Council member;
- The Congo has been a member since 2012 and went from 5.5 to 6; and
- Other countries that are currently or have been members of the Council and declined are Bahrain, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Djibouti, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Madagascar, Maldives, Mexico, Montenegro, Nicaragua, South Korea, Ukraine, Uganda, Venezuela and Zambia.
The only good news in this regard comes from Senegal, which served for 6 years and improved slightly from 3 to 2.5, entering the category of Free countries.
Fantastic human rights abusers and where to find them
On October 28, 2016, a third of the seats on the Council were up for election. China, the world’s most populous dictatorship, achieved its best result so far with 180 votes, a result that revealed the support of a number of democratic governments. At the same time Cuba and Saudi Arabia received 160 and 152 votes respectively, the overwhelming support in the General Assembly for three dictatorships, far exceeding the two-thirds majority, promoted by the United States.
In the case of Latin America, it is worth mentioning that the region’s more consolidated democracies served less time in the Council then those with poor human rights records. For example, Costa Rica completed only one term from 2012 to 2014, Uruguay served two consecutive terms from 2007 to 2012 and then lost in its 2014 campaign against Cuba, and Chile, one of the most Free countries in Latin America according to Freedom House. The latter was only represented on the Council for six years between 2009 and 2014.
Instead of being represented by stable democracies, the region is currently overrepresented by Bolivarian states like Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela—by no stretch stalwarts of human rights regionally or internationally.
If we take a look at the UN elections themselves, there are even more curiosities. In general, an election is an efficient exercise of democratic control; a government or a member of parliament whose work was not satisfying can be replaced. However, this process can only work if there are other options available that are more promising for the voter, which is where the elections of the UNHRC come in. In elections for the Council, electoral competition is either non-existent or very scarce. The following shows the lack of democratic competition, dividing all the elections into two groups. Black represents an election without electoral competition; grey indicates scarce competition (one candidate more than seats available). There have been 55 elections for the UNHRC (one in each regional group every year) and in 60% of them, candidates ran unopposed. The remaining 22 elections saw fifteen cases of scarce competition, while only seven instances, or 15% of all elections held, featured more than one rival candidate.
As the chart indicates, Africa and Asia are the regional groups that saw the least electoral participation. While nominating 55% of total seats, candidates from the two regions did not face any competition in 73% of elections. This is even more worrisome given that 80% of the Not-Free Member States elected to the Council came from these two regions. Each year, when a third of the Council seats become available, an average of 3.7 Not-Free countries enter the organization from these two regions.
Furthermore, our analysis reveals low levels of electoral competition in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Each region only registered one election in which more than one rival candidate participated. This obviously opens the door for countries with poor human rights records, such as Cuba in Latin America and Russia in Eastern Europe. In fact, Cuba and Russia have only lost one election to the Council. In 2016, Russia only garnered 112 votes, losing to Croatia, which received 114 votes.
While there is room for improvement in the “Western Europe and Others” group, the region has consistently elected countries with reliable human rights records. Moreover, this group is underrepresented on the Council. The imbalance benefits the Eastern European group by one state. The Western Europe and Others group consists of 29 states, many of which have comparatively high standards with respect to human rights. While they have a proportional representation in the 15.1% in the UN, the region only accounts for 12.77% of seats in the UNHRC. Given the deteriorating democratic situation in Eastern Europe, the imbalance raises some important questions.
Western Europe and “others” relative lack of participation in the Council and disproportionate lack of weight creates a bad image of the democratic system in the UN and suggests a majority of member countries do not have any interest in improving the human rights situation in world. A quick look at the 9 of 22 elections in which there was electoral competition and the General Assembly favored countries with worse domestic human rights records. In short, established democracies—irrespective of their engagement—are clearly at a proportional disadvantage.
To improve the composition of the UNHRC, UN Member States need to show their commitment to human rights and be voted on based on that commitment. Free democratic states in Asia and Africa need to engage more in this regard. They are located in largely authoritarian regions with a history of negative influencing the dissemination and enforcement of human rights at the international level—showing all the more reason why those few democratically inclined governments should bond together.
Transparent elections and enforcement of rules
To make the UNHRC more efficient, member states need to introduce a series of reform and quickly. What follows is a set of two proposals that would allow the Council to achieve its goals more easily.
- First, Article 7 of the resolution that created the Council needs to be modified to change the ballot from secret to public. In contrast to the individual who casts her vote in secrecy to elect whomever she wants, a democratic state in the General Assembly has to be held accountable for its decisions by its people. We are proposing that member governments be held accountable by making their votes public. This would bring transparency that would allow the citizens of a democratic state to effectively control whether their country complies with the requirements for Member States demanded in articles 8 and 9. Furthermore, the public ballot would generate a healthy debate in democratic nations that support the election bids of authoritarian regimes.
- Second, Article 9 that states that Member States have to cooperate fully with the Council, has to be enforced by binding the members to an open invitation to UN Special Rapporteurs. This way, countries like Cuba, China and Saudi Arabia would be obliged to grant the visits of the following UN investigators: Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, among others. Many of them have been barred in those countries despite regular protestations that they be allowed to visit and those countries’ continued presence on the UNHRC intended to promote those functions and responsibilities.
To that end, proposal should be incorporated at the end of article 9 as follows: “The General Assembly decides also that members elected to the Council shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights, shall fully cooperate with the Council, shall be reviewed under the universal periodic review mechanism during their term of membership and issue permanent invitations to all of the UN Special Rapporteurs.” Needless to say, a state which is part of the UNHRC but refuses to receive Special Rapporteurs is obviously not upholding “the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights”.
In order for these proposals to be adopted, it would be highly conducive if countries that support these initiatives voluntarily apply these measures by publicly disclosing their vote and issuing permanent invitations to all Special Rapporteurs if elected to the Council.