The UN Human Rights Council has elected Ambassador Omar Zniber of Morocco as president of the UN Human Rights Council for 2024 after he beat South African envoy, Mxolisi Nkosi in a vote.
Voting was by secret poll on January 10 and held after the 47-member council resumed its work for 2024 with out a chief for less than the second time in its 18-year historical past.
Of the votes forged, Zniber received 30 to the 17 forged for Nkosi with all members voting.
The council presidency rotates yearly between 5 regional teams that usually attain a consensus on a candidate to endorse. Nonetheless, members of the Africa group couldn’t achieve this, forcing the vote.
Zniber was elected in a course of wherein all 47 members of the Geneva-based human rights physique voted to nominate its president for 2024 – the council’s 18th annual cycle.
“It’s an honour for each the Kingdom of Morocco and for me personally to have been elected as head of this august Council for its 18th cycle – a place belonging to Africa,” Ambassador Zniber instructed the council after being elected.
He mentioned he now had an obligation to work for the council whose work is “so essential and so elementary” to “assure human rights as universally acknowledged.”
Zniber’s presidency takes speedy impact, and he joins ambassadors Febrian Ruddyard of Indonesia, Darius Staniulis of Lithuania, Marcelo Eliseo Scappini Ricciard of Paraguay, and Heidi Schroderus-Fox of Finland, who had been elected on December 8, 2023, as council vice-presidents for the present 12 months.
A profession diplomat, Zniber has served as ambassador to the UN in Geneva since 2018. Nkosi can be a profession diplomat with huge international affairs expertise who has served in Geneva since December 2020.
Voting uncommon
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Though voting for the highest rotating put up on the council has been uncommon, non-governmental organizations instructed the Geneva Options publication that permitting the choice to go to a vote allows fairer and extra clear elections.
“As we’ve seen in recent times with the defeat of council candidates akin to Russia, aggressive elections allow electors to make selections primarily based on human rights issues, amongst others, moderately than having that alternative made for them behind closed doorways,” Phil Lynch who heads the Worldwide Service for Human Rights (ISHR), instructed Geneva Options.
Based on a scorecard arrange by the ISHR, neither South Africa nor Morocco meets all of the requirements set by the Human Rights Council. South Africa nudges Morocco within the scoring, with neither nation having ratified elementary worldwide human rights treaties and optionally available protocols regarding them.
The Human Rights Council holds its first session for the 12 months from February 26 to April 5, when crises in Ukraine and Gaza are anticipated to stir sizzling debate and divisions.
