Ahead of Tuesday’s elections for the UN Human Rights Council, activists called on the world body to oppose the candidacies of Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Vietnam, and Angola, deeming those states “unqualified” due to their poor records on respecting human rights at home, and in voting on UN resolutions concerning human rights.
The country ratings appear in a new joint report by a cross-regional coalition of three human rights groups, United Nations Watch in Switzerland, Human Rights Foundation in the U.S., and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights in Canada.
“Electing serial human rights abusers like Pakistan, Egypt, and Iraq as UN judges on human rights is like making a gang of arsonists into the fire brigade,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of United Nations Watch, an independent non-governmental human rights organization based in Geneva.
“It will be slap in the face to their many victims of human rights abuse - including political prisoners, persecuted journalists, children subjected to child labor - if the UN makes gross abusers into global judges and guardians of human rights,” said Neuer.
“When the UN’s highest human rights body becomes a case of the foxes guarding the henhouse, the world’s victims suffer.”
Unlike previous years, this year’s election features a total absence of competition in all five regional slates, meaning all candidates are in practice guaranteed to win, despite their poor records on human rights.
“The absence of competition this year undermines the very premise and rationale for holding elections,” said Neuer.
“We are calling on France, Germany, the UK, the US, and other democracies to publicly announce that they will not vote for Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Vietnam and Angola, who have been deemed unqualified for the Human Rights Council. So far, at least in the public arena, they have been silent.”
The report also listed Mauritius, South Africa, India, and Ecuador as having “questionable” credentials, due to problematic human rights and UN voting records that should be improved.
Currently, 56% of UNHRC members are non-democracies, including China, Cuba, Qatar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Burundi, Somalia, and Vietnam.
Last week, activists were outraged when representatives of Iran and China were appointed to the UNHRC’s advisory committee of 18 experts.
Call to Reform Election System
UN Watch is proposing a major reform to the election system. “If our own democracies continue to disregard the election criteria by voting for abusers,” said Neuer, “then we should just scrap elections altogether, and make every country a member, as is the case in the General Assembly’s own human rights committee. Non-democracies could no longer hold up their UNHRC election as a shield of international legitimacy to cover up the abuses of their regime.”
“Regrettably,” said Neuer, “the EU has not said a word about hypocritical candidacies that only undermine the credibility and effectiveness of the UN human rights system. By turning a blind eye as human rights violators easily join and subvert the council, leading democracies will be complicit in the world body’s moral decline.”
UN Watch Brings Leading Dissidents to Confront Dictatorships
United Nations Watch is the leading human rights NGO at the UN giving human rights defenders a global platform. In the recent 60th session of the UNHRC, the group invited key figures to speak, including Venezuela’s Leopoldo Lopez, former North Korean political prisoner Timothy Cho, and a delegation of ethnic minority rights activists from Syria. UN Watch also took the floor for human rights in Turkey, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Kuwait, Laos, and Kyrgyzstan.
Read: Report on UNHRC Candidates 2026-2028
