SAUDI ARABIA: Repressive state fails to win UN Human Rights Council seat
At the annual elections of new members of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), held in October, Saudi Arabia failed to win a seat, presumably still paying the price for its egregious and high-profile human rights abuses, not least its 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and its continuing persecution of women’s rights activists.
As civil society, we must exert a strong influence on states with high standards of democracy and respect for human rights, so that they exercise as much committed diplomacy as possible on this issue, be it in the context of the elections to the UNHRC, in discussion of resolutions on country situations within the UNHRC, in the context of the Universal Periodic Review, or possibly when it comes to suspending a country’s membership of the UNHRC.
Brian Schapira
