Originally published at: Russia fails to win seat on U.N. Human Rights Council | Boing Boing
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Now onto their leadership bid for the UNHCR. They have a better chance at this goal, having created millions of new refugees in the space of two years.
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I am morbidly curious about whether 83 member nations think that Russia is actually suitable; or if they just think that the UN human rights seat is a largely ceremonial platform for performative deploring and so suitability is orthogonal to selection.
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They vote for Russia because it will protect them from criticism in return for their vote.
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I’d hope they realize that a seat is ceremonial/performative, especially since the U.S. is on it. We might not be as bad as some countries based on scale, but the country that just recently put a barbed-wire death trap in the Rio Grande only has so much legitimate finger-wagging potential.
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A lot of those countries are controlled by authoritarians who don’t like the idea that they might called to account by the liberal democracies of the West that dominate the rules-based international order (despite the fact that Western countries’ human rights records are far from spotless). Having a known and powerful fellow abuser on the Council makes them feel more secure about not facing consequences.
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The US is probably on equal footing if you take the “War of Terror” into consideration.
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That’s a very good point. Which just shows how successful TPTB have been in “branding” the Forever War.
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I was under the impression the voting was anonymised.
Whether this makes a difference or not, I have no idea.
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