UN: 18 new Human Rights Council members elected by UNGA

The United Nations General Assembly elected 18 new Human Rights Council members for a three-year term in New York, Wednesday. Permanent Representative of the Republic of Paraguay to the UN Federico Alberto Gonzalez Franco announced that the new members, Belgium, Burundi, Cote d'Ivoire, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Germany, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Panama, Philippines, South Korea, Slovenia, Switzerland, Togo, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela, will join the 47-member Council starting January 1, 2016. The Human Rights Council, which meets at the UN Office in Geneva, can decide to vote with an absolute majority on sending monitoring envoys to one of the member states in support of the protection of human rights and to report on situations of human rights violations. In 2006, the UN Commission on Human Rights replaced the Human Rights Council, as part of the Kofi Anan backed reform of the UN.