Saudi Arabia was defeated for a seat in the U.N.’s premier human rights body Wednesday after a campaign by rights groups urging the world body’s members to reject its bid.

Saudi Arabia was defeated for a seat in the U.N.’s premier human rights body Wednesday after a campaign by rights groups that accused the Saudis of serious rights violations.

The 193-member General Assembly elected 18 new members to serve on the 47-nation Human Rights Council, which allocates seats to regional groups to ensure geographical representation.

The Geneva-based council reviews the human rights records of all countries periodically, appoints independent investigators to examine and report on issues like torture and situations in countries like North Korea, Iran and Myanmar, and sends fact-finding missions to investigate rights violations, including in Ukraine.

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Before the vote, Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch, called Saudi Arabia “unfit to serve on the Human Rights Council.”

He pointed to the rights group’s documentation of Saudi border guards opening fire and likely killing hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross the Yemen-Saudi border in 2022 and 2023, and the lack of accountability for the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

  • FuglyDuckEnglish
    9•1 month ago

    Normally? Somewhere around “pretty fucked up”.

    They had to recalibrate the scale for the Saudis, though, and that fell on “it was a normal Tuesday.”