United Nations: 12 new elected countries to serve new terms on Human Rights Council

12 new countries were chosen to serve a three year period in the Human Rights Council. After the voting ended, the UN Assembly President announced the chosen countries that will begin their work on the 1st of January 2023.
The list of countries include Algeria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Chile, Costa Rica, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Morocco, Romania, South Africa and VietNam. South Korea and Venezuela failed to be re-elected.

The Council, whose role is to uphold and advance human rights globally, is composed of 47 member states, elected by secret ballot by majority of GA members and each member serves for a three year period eligible for one consecutive re-election term onli. The selection follows an equitable geographical distribution based on regions. For Africa there are 13 States, Asia-Pacific has 13, Eastern Europe 6, Latin America and Caribbean 8, Western European and others 7.

The full membership of the current Council is Argentina, Armenia, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Czech Republic, Eritrea, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Germany, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mexico, Montenegro, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, Pakistan, Paraguay, Poland, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Russia, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela.

On 6 December 2021, Federico Villegas of Argentina was elected president for 2022 and vowed to make the Council “a stable platform to increase dialogue and deepen understanding about commonalities and differences about human rights”.