Zambia to sit on UN rights Council

Zambia to sit on UN rights Council
By Mutuna Chanda
Sunday May 25, 2008 [04:00]

ZAMBIA is among four African countries that have been elected to sit on the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council. In elections held last Wednesday, Zambia was elected together with Ghana, Gabon and Burkina Faso to sit on the 47-member council.
Seats on the council are voted for by region and 15 of the slots were subject to elections. Africa and Latin America candidates won easily without opposition while Asia, Eastern Europe and Western European groups competed for spaces.

The four African countries including Zambia were elected to the Council unopposed.

Argentina, Brazil and Chile were elected from the Latin America region.

France got 123 votes while Britain polled 120 barely defeating Spain which got 119 votes to get the two Western seats.

In the contest for four Council seats from the Asian region, Japan, Bahrain, South Korea and Pakistan beat Sri Lanka and East Timor.
In the race for two seats in the Eastern European group, Slovakia and Ukraine beat Serbia and the Czech Republic.

New York-based Freedom House and the Geneva-based UN Watch, which monitors the world body’s performance based on its charter, evaluated the 20 candidates for the 15 council seats on their records of promoting human rights at home and at the United Nations.

Their report gave negative ratings to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Gabon and Zambia, and “questionable” ratings to three candidates with mixed human rights records - Brazil, East Timor and Burkina Faso. It gave “qualified” ratings to Ghana, Japan, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Argentina, Chile, France, Spain and Britain.

The Human Rights Council was created in March 2006 to replace the UN’s Human Rights Commission. One of the aims of the council was to keep some of the worst human rights offenders out of its membership.