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In April last year, Russia was excluded from the UN Human Rights Council due to the country’s war of aggression against Ukraine. An attempt to re-enter was unsuccessful on Tuesday.
After a vote by the UN General Assembly’s 193 members, it was clear that Russia had not managed to gather enough support for re-entry.
There were two Eastern European seats in the council at stake, now these went to Bulgaria and Albania. The two countries received 160 and 123 votes respectively.
Russia managed to collect 83 votes.
– Russia can still boast of having the support of almost half of the UN’s members today, points out Richard Gowan from the independent aid organization International Crisis Group.
The election to the UN Human Rights Council for the period 2024 to 2026 had been designated in advance as a test of how strong support for Ukraine – and disapproval of Russia – remains.
The Human Rights Council’s 47 countries are elected by the General Assembly for three-year terms. Russia was in the second of its three years when the country was kicked out. The exclusion was then based on a resolution from 2006 that makes it possible to exclude countries that “commit gross and systematic abuses of human rights”.