The General Assembly must immediately terminate Russia’s membership in the Human Rights Council.

The General Assembly has required that members of the Human Rights Council respect human rights and has created criteria and a mechanism to protect the Council.

The Human Rights Council is made up of 47 member states chosen by the UN General Assembly’s 193 members. Members of the HRC are obligated by UN General Assembly Resolution 60/251 to uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights, as well as to fully cooperate with the United Nations human rights institutions. The General Assembly established HRC membership requirements, as well as a mechanism for suspending membership privileges, in order to protect the Council’s institutional integrity and legitimacy. This was deemed especially vital when the Council was founded in 2006 in order to prevent the disgrace that its previous organization, the Human Rights Commission, had fallen into due to the lack of membership requirements and suspension criteria.

The UN General Assembly has the authority to suspend a member of the HRC’s membership privileges if such State commits serious and systemic human rights abuses. This requires the General Assembly to pass a resolution by a two-thirds majority of the States present and voting, with just yes and no votes counting. In other words, the total number of states voting yes for suspension must be twice as large as the total number of states voting no for suspension. The most recent vote on the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine was accepted by the General Assembly with 140 yes votes and 5 no votes (that is, almost 30 times more yes than no votes).

Russia clearly fits the requirements for suspension. Suspension is required to protect the Human Rights Council’s integrity and the General Assembly’s authority, as well as to avoid entrenching impunity for egregious and systemic abuses.

There is overwhelming evidence that Russia is responsible for gross and systematic violations of human rights in Ukraine, some of which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as the deliberate or indiscriminate targeting and killing of civilians, as well as the deliberate or indiscriminate targeting and destruction of hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, and homes. Russia’s crimes have resulted in a humanitarian disaster in Ukraine.

At least 1104 people, including 96 children, were killed, according to the UN Human Rights Office. According to the UN refugee agency, some 3.7 million people have been compelled to abandon Ukraine and seek asylum elsewhere, while another 6.5 million have been displaced within the nation. At least 64 assaults on health-care institutions have been registered by the World Health Organization. The invasion is plainly an act of aggression, as well as a flagrant violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, as well as the fundamental objectives and values of the UN Charter.

Authorities in Russia have engaged in egregious and systemic abuses aimed at suppressing and punishing any criticism of the war. These violations include the arbitrary arrest and incarceration of nearly 15,000 nonviolent demonstrators, persecution of civil society, restriction and silence of independent media, and criminalization of exercising the rights to freedom of speech, association, assembly, or public participation.

The evidence for Russia’s suspension is compelling and unique.

No Human Rights Council member state has a faultless human rights record, and a number of current Council members are responsible for significant abuses. However, the scale and gravity of Russia’s violations, as well as the overwhelming and unmistakable evidence that Russia is committing the crime of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations, all in violation of the UN Charter and another State’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, make it a very unique contemporary case.

While other current HRC members may have been responsible for gross and systematic human rights violations in the context of the unlawful use of force within or against another State in the past, these acts occurred prior to the establishment of the HRC with its membership requirements and suspension procedure.

Russia is currently accountable for egregious and systemic breaches, including atrocity crimes, and the UN General Assembly has an obligation to act immediately.

The action or inaction of the General Assembly in this case will determine whether the Human Rights Council membership criteria established by consensus in 2006 remain valid or are completely meaningless, as well as whether a member of the P5 should comply with international law or be given complete impunity for violations of international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and the UN Charter itself.

The suspension of Russia’s rights to participation in the Human Rights Council would not obstruct attempts to resolve the war via bilateral or multilateral discussion, nor would it restrict or eliminate options for accountability.

Suspension is not synonymous with expulsion or exclusion. The suspension of Russia’s HRC membership rights would simply mean that Russia would not have the benefits of participation in the 47-member body and would be unable to submit or vote on resolutions or amendments at the HRC, placing Russia on an equal footing with the other 146 observer nations. Russia would continue to be subject to, and allowed to participate in, all HRC meetings, procedures, and processes on the same terms as all other non-member nations.

Russia’s halt is consistent with efforts to promote discussion and a peaceful end to the war.

The General Assembly has a duty to act now.

The only question for the General Assembly is whether Russia should be allowed to continue to enjoy the benefits of HRC membership in situations when it is clearly in violation of membership requirements, and, moreover, where maintaining its membership rights would:

• Undermine the HRC’s institutional integrity and bring it into shame,
• Weaken the General Assembly’s authority and render a GA decision meaningless, and
• Tolerate and institutionalize impunity for egregious and systemic abuses committed by a P5 State.

A wide coalition of 50 NGOs from every part of the globe has approved the appeal for the General Assembly to suspend Russia’s rights to membership in the HRC.