Background:
At a meeting in New York yesterday (28 October), the United Nations General Assembly elected 18 United Nations Member States, including Germany, to the United Nations Human Rights Council for the 2016-2018 term. Along with Germany, these countries were Belgium, Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Panama, Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Switzerland, Togo, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
The United Nations Human Rights Council, which is comprised of 47 elected member states, has a wide-ranging mandate to address human rights violations in individual countries and to make recommendations. It reports directly to the General Assembly. In the Universal Periodic Review, the Human Rights Council has a mechanism through which all United Nations Member States regularly review whether they are fulfilling their human rights obligations. A German diplomat, Ambassador Joachim Rücker, is this year’s President of the Human Rights Council.
Elections to the Human Rights Council take place every year, with one third of its members being elected on a rotating basis for a three-year term. Since the Human Rights Council was founded in 2006, Germany has been elected three times to it.
