UNITED NATIONS, November 5. /TASS/. UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has become a platform for promoting conjunctural interests, while discussions there are turning into settling political scores and defaming countries, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of Humanitarian Cooperation and Human Rights Grigory Lukyantsev said at the UN General Assembly session devoted to HRC’s work.
"We have to note that the Council’s agenda has become an instrument for promoting conjunctural interests of several countries and groups. Discussions more and more often turn into settling political scores, mentorship, defamation of states. Moreover, the ungrounded geographical imbalance in the matter of human rights situations in one or another country does not reflect real tendencies, but rather represents a result of political orders," Lukyantsev said.
Russia also disapproves of "attempts to use HRC for including different politically charged issues on the agenda for UN General Assembly," including ideas on transferring the human rights situation to UN Security Council and International Criminal Court, the diplomat added. He stressed that "UN bodies authorized to deal with human rights should not interfere in the competence of other structures within the organization."
The diplomat said that Russia is also concerned about "insistent attempts of certain countries to submit deliberately confrontational topics to HRC’s consideration instead of looking for unifying issues."
On October 28, Russia failed to secure re-election to UN HRC as it did not receive enough votes at UN General Assembly. Fourteen countries were elected to HRC for the three-year term that starts on 1 January 2017, including UK, Egypt, Iraq, China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and US. Lukyantsev congratulated these countries and expressed hope that they will "contribute to developing constructive cooperation with the aim of promoting and protecting human rights enshrined in universal international documents."
He said the most important task that HRC faces is the restoration of "mutually respectful character of inter-governmental dialogue." He stressed that "it is important to prevent the Council from losing trust." "The aforementioned alarming tendencies in HRC’s work may take the Council to the position of the Commission on Human Rights during late 1990s - early 2000s, which would once again discredit UN’s work in the sphere of promoting and defending human rights," he concluded.