For the third year running, civil society advocacy succeeded in keeping an egregious human rights violator off the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council, the world’s most important human rights body. In 2022 it was Venezuela. Last year it was Russia. This time it was Saudi Arabia.

In the 9 October vote for new Council members, Saudi Arabia came sixth in a competition for five seats in the Asia and Pacific regional bloc. From the Council’s inception in 2006 until 2019, Saudi Arabia had a seat most of the time, only stepping out for a couple of years between terms. But its bids to rejoin have now failed twice, in 2020 and again this year.

Under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in its bid, part of a multi-billion-dollar PR campaign, Vision 2030, to launder the country’s tarnished international image and rebrand it as a modernising progressive nation. Much of this involves grandiose and eye-catching projects, such as futuristic new cities powered by the latest technology, and sportswashing initiatives, including buying football clubs and hosting prestige international competitions.

As part of this, Saudi Arabia wants to play a greater role in international institutions. Posing as a good global citizen, it recently succeeded in being elected to chair the UN Commission on the Status of Women despite its abysmal record on women’s rights. There were no rival candidates and nobody objected.

Fortunately, it didn’t make it onto the Human Rights Council. But it wasn’t all good news: several other states that systematically abuse rights took seats.

Naming and shaming

The General Assembly resolution establishing the Human Rights Council states that the selection process must ‘take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights’. Once elected, Council members are required to ‘uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights’ and ‘fully cooperate with the Council’.

Too many states haven’t taken these provisions seriously. Some clearly covet Council membership to shield themselves from international scrutiny. It falls to civil society to try to uphold the principles.

In the run-up to the vote, International Service for Human Rights, a civil society organisation, published scorecards for each of the candidate states. These assessed their track records on areas such as past cooperation with and leadership within the Council, implementation and follow-up of recommendations received in the Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, ratification of core human rights treaties and interaction with treaty bodies, and treatment of civil society in relation to UN processes.

Several civil society groups made public statements and published advocacy briefs to highlight the human rights shortcomings of candidate states. Drawing on their monitoring tools and UPR data, they identified the worst ones.

Saudi Arabia was at the top of everyone’s list. The state has systematically evaded accountability for horrific human rights violations, including the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate, war crimes in Yemen and potential crimes against humanity related to its treatment of migrants and asylum seekers.

Another obviously bad candidate was Ethiopia, where there’s been no accountability for war crimes committed by government forces in recent civil conflicts, including ongoing conflict in the Amhara region. Ethiopia was the subject of a special international commission, launched by the Human Rights Council in 2021, to investigate conflict-related violations. Its findings report, published in 2023, revealed that Ethiopian forces had attacked civilians in schools and a hospital and committed sexual violence against women during conflict in the Tigray region.

The Ethiopian government consistently resisted the commission’s work, and last year successfully lobbied for its mandate to expire. But the abuses continue: a recent UN update report documented 594 cases of human rights violations in 2023, including killings, inhumane treatment, arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances. As the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect put it, Ethiopia’s presence will undermine the Council’s credibility.

Civil society also highlighted the poor human rights record of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and identified significant domestic human rights issues in Kenya, Mexico, Qatar and Thailand. Even states with relatively good domestic human rights records faced scrutiny, such as the Czech Republic, accused of inconsistency since it has supported action to hold Russia accountable for war crimes in Ukraine, but not Israel for its many violations in Gaza.

Overall, the states least deserving a Council seat were Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, but while civil society advocacy succeeded in keeping Saudi Arabia out, it couldn’t stop Ethiopia.

Uncompetitive elections

The Council has 47 members who serve three-year terms, with around a third rotating off each year. States can be re-elected for a second term, as was the case with Benin, The Gambia and Qatar this year, but then must take a break of at least a year before standing again. Although all UN member states participate in the election of all Council members, a fixed number of seats are allocated to each of the five UN blocs: Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Europe and other states.

The problem is that most elections are uncompetitive, with blocs nominating as many candidates as there are seats available. As a result, candidates are often elected unopposed, without any scrutiny. Of 19 elections held since 2006, four had closed slates in all regions, four had competition in only one region and nine had two competitive slates. Competition is the exception rather than the rule.

This time only one regional bloc – Asia and the Pacific – was competitive, with six candidates for five seats. That gave civil society the chance to target Saudi Arabia as the worst candidate and urge states to vote against it. It was still a narrow victory: Saudi Arabia came last, but received 117 votes, just seven fewer than the Marshall Islands.

Other repressive states from this bloc made it onto the Council, with some major human rights violators winning big votes. Two states with repressed civic space – Thailand and Qatar – were elected with 177 and 167 votes respectively. The Marshall Islands was the bloc’s winning state with the fewest votes, even though it was the candidate with the best human rights record, and the only one with open civic space.

Civil society could do little about Ethiopia because the African bloc’s uncompetitive election guaranteed it a seat. However, civil society continued encouraging states committed to human rights to vote against, to try to send a message and deny legitimacy.

Civil society will keep calling for genuinely competitive elections. They’re no silver bullet – last year in a competitive vote, authoritarian Cuba beat Peru – but they offer a valuable opportunity to expose human rights violations, push for higher stands and exert pressure on the worst offenders.

Among outgoing Council members, two – Eritrea and the United Arab Emirates – have closed civic space, indicating the complete repression of fundamental freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly. It’s encouraging that none of the incoming states have closed civic space. But it’s still the case that 10 of the 18 new members impose serious civic space restrictions, and the Council continues to include at least two states – China and Sudan – accused of committing mass atrocity crimes.

Resolution round-up

When it comes to the substance of the Council’s discussions at its latest session, the results were also mixed.

During the session, the Council adopted numerous resolutions on a wide range of issues, including on the use of mercenaries, the elimination of domestic violence and the right to safe drinking water and sanitation.

One important resolution was on biodiversity and human rights. Ahead of the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity at the end of October, the Council requested the High Commissioner for Human Rights to undertake a global study on the implementation of a rights-based approach to the goals and targets of the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework, and to engage with Indigenous peoples, people of African descent and groups in vulnerable situations to advance human rights-based action on biodiversity.

Another important resolution focused on human rights on the internet, calling on states to accelerate efforts to bridge digital divides, including the gender digital divide, and take measures to promote free, open and secure internet access.

Other resolutions focused on the human rights of excluded groups. A resolution on the human rights of migrants requested the Office of the High Commissioner to prepare a study on human rights monitoring in the context of migration, including at international borders, and to hold a discussion on measures to address dehumanising and harmful narratives about migrants and migration, hate speech and xenophobia against migrants.

Another resolution, on human rights and Indigenous peoples, set the focus of an annual discussion on the rights of Indigenous peoples in the context of a just energy transition, including in relation to mineral extraction, and encouraged the UN to involve Indigenous women and young people in the debate.

Civil society welcomed the adoption of a resolution on equal participation in political and public affairs, which for the first time included language on children and recognised their right to participation, and on racism and xenophobia, which called on states to find ways to redress historical racial injustices.

The Council also voted to renew the mandates of several rapporteurs, independent experts and fact-finding missions to monitor human rights, including in Afghanistan, the DRC, Russia, Sudan and Venezuela. It appointed four mandate holders, including the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, and extended the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change for another three years.

But the Council ignored some of today’s most pressing issues where the interests of powerful states are at stake. Despite a recent International Court of Justice ruling making clear that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal under international law, the Council failed to condemn Israel’s crimes against Palestinian people. It also failed to act on China’s human rights abuses and the ongoing human rights crisis in Yemen.

Change needed

Despite its many shortcomings, the Human Rights Council undoubtedly plays a vital role in exposing human rights abuses, urging higher standards and providing civil society with a platform to demand accountability. But a stronger Council is needed.

Alongside other vital ingredients such as improved funding for the UN’s human rights pillar, competitive elections are one key means to strengthen the Council, creating opportunities to exclude the worst offenders and push for stronger human rights leadership and performance from those that take seats. Civil society will keep calling for this as part of its efforts to improve respect for human rights and challenge impunity of those that abuse them.

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