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Many candidates carry out elaborate high-profile campaigns, replete with glossy publications and intense public diplomacy. The limited choice offered in HRC elections stands in marked contrast to the hype that goes into their run-up. They also require that Council members uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights and cooperate fully with the Council. They require voting states to take account of each candidate’s contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights and its voluntary electoral pledges and commitments. The Council’s rules provide that Council membership is open to all UN member states. The term of membership is three years, with elections held annually to replace approximately one third of the members from each regional group. HRC members are elected directly and individually by secret ballot by the majority of the members of the GA, which currently requires 97 votes. Latin American and Caribbean States (8).
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The HRC’s 47 seats are distributed as follows among the UN’s regional groups: In the HRC elections since 2006, out of 55 regional electoral slates, 33 (or 60%) have been clean slates.
#CLEAN SLATE MEANING FULL#
Each Council seat comes with substantial responsibility, and the full UN membership should have a real role in determining which states are entrusted with that responsibility.Ĭlean slates, of course, are not a new problem. The quality of each Council member’s commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights and the role of the UN is central to the Council’s ability to fulfil its mandate faithfully.
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While the Council’s rules and practices allow a large active role for observer states and other observers, only the members vote, and they ultimately determine what the Council decides. The UN General Assembly will elect 15 Human Rights Council members on October 16, 2017. In this year’s election, only the Asian Group is presenting a contested slate with six candidates competing for four seats.įlickr/ United Nations Photo( CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, Some Rights Reserved) The HRC’s membership criteria set out in GA resolution 60/251 are intended to promote Council membership committed to the promotion and protection of human rights, but clean slates deny the GA members the opportunity to pursue that objective in their choice of HRC members. The HRC already suffers from questions of legitimacy and accusations of double standards for the Council to have meaning for the broader human rights community, it needs members credibly dedicated to human rights in these seats. However, the presentation of clean slates-in which the number of candidates is equal to the number of vacant seats-by four of the five UN regional groups makes a mockery of this “election”. On 16 October 2017, the UN General Assembly (GA) will hold elections for 15 seats on the Human Rights Council (HRC) for the term starting on 1 January 2018.