As the United Nations’ pro-Palestinian bias demonstrates, the globalist institution still has a long way to go before it can claim to speak with any genuine moral authority on critical human rights issues
UN General Assembly Votes to Suspend Russia from UN Human Rights Council
By Joseph A. Klein, CFP United Nations Columnist ——Bio and Archives--April 7, 2022
The United Nations General Assembly took the extraordinary step on Thursday of suspending Russia from the UN Human Rights Council because of its horrendous human rights violations following the invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces. The resolution expressed “grave concern at the ongoing human rights and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, particularly at the reports of violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law by the Russian Federation, including gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights.”
The United States led the call for this suspension, which received ninety-three votes in favor. Twenty-four countries voted against the suspension resolution while fifty-eight countries abstained. A two-thirds majority of Member States present and voting either yes or no was required to approve the resolution, which was calculated without counting abstention votes. Seventy-nine percent of Member States included in the voting calculation approved suspending Russia from the 47-member Human Rights Council.
Russia had warned Member States that a yes vote to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council or an abstention would be considered an "unfriendly gesture" resulting in consequences for continuing bilateral relations. But the appeal by Ukraine’s UN Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya won the day. He asked Member States before the vote to “press the ‘yes’ button and to save the Human Rights Council and many lives around the world and in Ukraine.”
This was the third time the UN General Assembly voted on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and expressed its disapproval. The decision to suspend Russia as a Human Rights Council member is the General Assembly’s most dramatic move yet to signify widespread disgust by countries across the globe with the atrocities committed by the Russian regime in Ukraine. A regime has to have acted in an unbelievably atrocious manner to lose its seat on the dysfunctional Human Rights Council, which has other systematic human rights abusers among its members.
Not surprisingly, Russia’s allies on the Human Rights Council, China and Cuba, voted against the suspension resolution.
In one sense, the General Assembly vote is less than meets the eye. Nearly twenty countries decided to stay away altogether. Fifty-eight countries copped out of taking a moral stance against Russia's flagrant violations of human rights in Ukraine by abstaining.
Following the General Assembly’s approval of the resolution suspending Russia from the Human Rights Council, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield called the vote “an important and historic moment.” She added that “the international community took one collective step in the right direction.”
One small step is better than nothing. However, as the United Nations’ pro-Palestinian bias demonstrates, the globalist institution still has a long way to go before it can claim to speak with any genuine moral authority on critical human rights issues.
