The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has voted to suspend Russia from the organisation’s leading human rights body, amid allegations that its soldiers killed civilians while retreating from the region around Ukraine’s capital.
The United States-initiated resolution received 93 votes in favour on Thursday, while 24 countries voted against and 58 others abstained.
The brief 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”.
Russia’s suspension from the UN Human Rights Council achieved the required two-thirds majority of the UNGA members that voted “yes” or “no”, with abstentions not counting in the calculation.
The move makes Moscow the first permanent member of the UN Security Council to ever have its membership revoked from any United Nations body.
“All you need to do is to press the ‘yes’ button and to save the Human Rights Council and many lives around the world and in Ukraine,” the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, told the General Assembly during a special session on Ukraine ahead of the vote.
“On the other hand, pressing ‘no’ means pulling a trigger and means a red dot on the screen – red as the blood of the innocent lives lost.”
Russia has called on an unspecified number of countries to vote “no”, saying an abstention or not voting would be considered an unfriendly act and would affect bilateral relations.
In its so-called “non-paper” obtained by The Associated Press news agency, Russia said the attempt to expel it from the Human Rights Council is a political act by countries that want to preserve their dominant position and control over the world.
Those nations want to continue “the politics of neo-colonialism of human rights” in international relations, it said, adding that Russia’s priority is to promote and defend human rights, including multilaterally in the Human Rights Council.
That was echoed by Gennady Kuzmin, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, who told the UNGA session before Thursday’s vote that the resolution “has nothing to do with the human rights situation on the ground”.
“What we see is an attempt by the US to maintain its dominant position and total control, to continue its attempt at human rights colonialism,” Kuzmin said.
US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield made the call for Russia to be stripped of its seat on the 47-member Human Rights Council earlier this week, following videos and photos of streets in the town of Bucha strewn with corpses of what appeared to be civilians.
“We believe that the members of the Russian forces committed war crimes in Ukraine, and we believe that Russia needs to be held accountable,” Thomas-Greenfield said on Monday.
“We cannot let a member state that is subverting every principle we hold dear to continue to sit on the UN Human Rights Council.”
The images emerging from the Kyiv region after Russia’s withdrawal have sparked global revulsion and calls for tougher sanctions.
Moscow has denied its troops were responsible for civilian deaths. Russia’s ambassador in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, called the US action “unfounded and purely emotional bravado that looks good on camera – just how the US likes it”.
“Washington exploits the Ukrainian crisis for its own benefit in an attempt either to exclude or suspend Russia from international organisations,” Gatilov said, in comments relayed by a Russian diplomatic mission spokesman.
Al Jazeera reporter Kristen Saloomey said at least 57 countries had signed on as co-sponsors of the US-led resolution.
But she said some nations, including Senegal and Cuba, on Thursday had spoken out against the resolution “on the grounds that it is singling out Russia before an investigation” into allegations of rights abuses in Ukraine.
“We’re hearing other countries talk about maintaining the structure of the council and having the investigation before kicking Russia out,” Saloomey reported, adding however that “NATO allies and Ukraine have received overwhelming support for resolutions that have called out Russia’s aggression and condemned Russia’s aggression” since the invasion of Ukraine began.
Russia is a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, alongside the United Kingdom, China, France, and the US. All currently have seats on the Human Rights Council, which the US rejoined this year.
No permanent member of the Security Council had ever had its membership revoked from any UN body before Thursday’s vote.
The only country to have its membership rights stripped at the Human Rights Council was Libya in 2011, when upheaval in the North African country brought down longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi.
