[korea makes the hrc]

Topic: United Nations

At the elections yesterday for the new UN Human Rights Council, South Korea was one of the 44 countries selected.

There is some controversy over the inclusion of habitual rights-violators China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan in the new Council, particularly since the Council was intended to replace the Commission on Human Rights, which lost credibility for including countries with poor human rights records. The election of the six troubling countries to some extent justifies American concerns that the new Council fails to resolve the problems it was meant to fix, though it doesn’t justify America’s sitting on the sidelines throughout the negotiation process and jumping in only at the end to condemn the results.

Nevertheless, I know that a number of people at the Korean Mission worked quite hard to get South Korea elected, so the election must be happy news for them.