UN General Assembly Suspends Russia From Human Rights Council

Russia has been suspended from the United Nations’s human rights council after its invasion of Ukraine provoked revulsion and outrage around the world.

At a meeting of the UN general assembly on Thursday, 93 members voted in favour of Russia’s suspension, while 24 were against and 58 abstained.

This met the required threshold of a two-thirds majority of the assembly members that vote yes or no, with abstentions not counting in the calculation.

Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s UN ambassador, had introduced the US-initiated resolution before the 193 members of the general assembly vote.

He said Russia has committed “horrific human rights violations and abuses that would be equated to war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

Kyslytsya added: “Russia’s actions are beyond the pale. Russia is not only committing human rights violations, it is shaking the underpinnings of international peace and security.”

Russia’s deputy ambassador, Gennady Kuzmin, urged members to vote against the resolution. “What we’re seeing today is an attempt by the United States to maintain its dominant position and total control,” he said. “We reject the untruthful allegations against us, based on staged events and widely circulated fakes.”

Kyslytsya responded to Russia’s complaints about the proceeding, saying: “We have heard, many times, the same perverted logic of the aggressor trying to present itself as the victim.”

Russia is only the second country to have its membership rights stripped at the Human Rights Council which was established in 2006. The assembly suspended Libya in 2011 when upheaval in the North African country brought down longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.

The human rights council is based in Geneva and its members are elected by the 193-nation general assembly for three-year terms. The March 2006 resolution that established the rights council says the assembly may suspend membership rights of a country “that commits gross and systematic violations of human rights”.

Thursday’s 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”.