More than 70 civil society organisations, including FORUM-ASIA, called on member states of the United Nations to end uncompetitive elections and vote trading for Human Rights Council elections. In their letter dated 13 August 2009, they said that each government should publicly commit to support contested and principled electoral process for future elections.
More than 70 civil society organisations, including FORUM-ASIA, called
on member states of the United Nations to end uncompetitive elections
and vote trading for Human Rights Council elections. In their letter
dated 13 August 2009, they said that each government should publicly
commit to support contested and principled electoral process for future
elections.
To: The
Member States of the UN General Assembly
Your Excellency,
As the Human Rights Council prepares for its 12th
regular session, the first session with the new members elected in May 2009, we write to ask your government to commit
itself publicly as a matter of national policy to support a competitive, genuinely-contested
and principled electoral process for future Human Rights Council elections.
General Assembly resolution 60/251, which
established the Council, specifies that Council members shall be elected
directly and individually, and that, in casting their ballots, Member States
"shall take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and
protection of human rights." These
provisions reflect the spirit of the resolution: UN Member States must be given
a real choice in order to elect members that will "uphold the highest standards
in the promotion and protection of human rights" and "fully cooperate with the
Council."
The election of Council members this year
failed to live up to these principles. There were serious impediments to electing
the countries most clearly committed to human rights that each region has to
offer. These impediments included: lack of candidates and competition; endorsed
regional slates; late, absent or insubstantial pledges and commitments; and
widespread vote trading.
With only twenty countries running for eighteen
seats this year, governments-including your own-were deprived of a real choice
of candidates. In three out of five regions, "clean slates" (where the same
number of candidates is presented as seats available for the region) undermined
the substantial progress made by resolution 60/251 over the election process of
the former Commission on Human Rights. Formal endorsement by the Asian Group of
the slate for the region and de facto endorsement by other regional groups of
their regional slates further reinforced the lack of choice. The lack of
competition also made it practically futile to assess candidates on the basis
of their human rights records and pledges. Numerous candidates running on
non-competitive slates submitted their pledges within days of the election, and
a couple failed to submit public pledges at all.
Vote trading by member states also marred this
election. Representatives of many governments complained about countries'
claiming to support human rights, while secretly trading votes with human
rights abusers to the detriment of candidates committed to the promotion and
protection of human rights. Vote trading effectively means that countries are
elected based on their ability to provide a swing vote in other elections,
rather than their rights records.
We call
on all UN Member States to bring vote trading arrangements and uncompetitive
elections for the Council to an end. The electoral process established in
resolution 60/251 was to ensure a more human-rights-committed membership and
was a large part of what was to make the Human Rights Council an improvement
over the Commission on Human Rights. The international community must act urgently
to fulfill its commitment to competitive, genuinely-contested and principled
elections, consistent with the spirit of resolution 60/251, and to give effect
to the reforms of 2006. The credibility of the Human Rights Council and its
ability to respond to human rights violations hang in the balance.
In preparation for next year's election, we call on your
government to publicly commit itself as a matter of national policy to
competitive, genuinely-contested and principled elections for the Human Rights
Council. We ask that your government state its commitment to:
- Only vote for
those candidates whose human rights record and election pledges meet the
membership requirements set forth in resolution 60/251; - Uphold the
principle of competitive elections for the Human Rights Council both by
indicating openness to competition if your government is a candidate for
membership and by encouraging other countries committed to human rights in
all regional slates to stand for election; - Present any
candidacy for Council membership individually rather than as part of a
regional slate, and encourage more states to seek election to the Council
than seats allocated to the regional group; - Avoid
regional endorsements of slates, as these go against the principle of contested
election by the universal membership of the United Nations envisaged by
resolution 60/251; - Cast
votes in Council elections taking into consideration candidates' rights
records, rather than political or economic considerations; - Refuse
to exchange votes to elect members to the Human Rights Council or disclose
voting intentions through formal or informal commitments; - Issue
concrete and specific pledges and commitments publicly and at least 30
days before the election, when seeking election to the Council, to allow UN
Member States to evaluate candidacies properly; and - Consult
with local and national civil society in formulating pledges and
commitments on pressing human rights issues and in their subsequent follow-up
and implementation.
This commitment could
be expressed in the General Assembly this fall in connection with the
consideration of the report of the Human Rights Council.
We commend Mexico's
announcement of a policy along these lines to the General Assembly in its
statement of March 15, 2006 and urge your government to follow that example.
Several governments
have already declared their intention to seek election to the Council next
year. We call on all states to contribute
to ensuring robust competition for 2010's Human Rights Council election with
the goal of a more effective Human Rights Council.
To download the complete letter, please click here (pdf).
(Photo courtesy of UN)
