Blogs China and Russia have won seats on a UN human rights body

China and Russia have won seats on a UN human rights body

The UNHRC is a UN body tasked with promoting and protecting human rights worldwide by investigating alleged breaches.To get more China latest news, you can visit shine news official website.

Not to be confused with several other bodies that begin with UN and end in "human rights" and do similar jobs.Behind the scenes manoeuvring meant that Russia and Cuba were shoe-ins for the regional blocs while China, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were among those competing for four seats allocated to Asia.

If you think Russia and China have unblemished human rights records then today's votes should not be that newsworthy.

Or you might think their appointment to the body is like letting arsonists into the fire brigade, in the words of UN Watch.

Human rights bodies are hopping mad that countries that regularly abuse human rights on a large scale are now sitting on the body that's meant to be protecting them.Well, China executes thousands of people every year and is accused of genocide - or something approaching it - against its Uighur minority.

Russia routinely silences dissent and political opposition, most recently allegedly using a nerve agent to deal with government critic Alexei Navalny.

Saudi Arabia, which arbitrarily detains and executes many prisoners and is accused of war crimes in Yemen, failed to win a seat on the body despite announcing reform plans.

The UN isn't so much a monolithic organisation as a collection of member countries.

They have equal voting power in these kinds of decisions and can be persuaded to vote this way or that.

Countries can twist the arms of smaller nations who owe them a favour.Each country needs to have its appointment confirmed in the UN General Assembly with 96 affirmative votes so if enough countries got together they could have in theory blocked the controversial appointments.

The UNHRC was set up in 2006 to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights exactly because its predecessor had been accused of letting countries with poor human rights records use their position to protect themselves and others like them carrying out abuses.