NOTE: Read the “Background” and watch the videos below before answering the questions.

1. The first paragraph of a news article should answer the questions who, what, where and when. List the who, what, where and when of this news item. (NOTE: The remainder of a news article provides details on the why and/or how.)

2. a) How many member countries are in the UN?
b) How many members are on the UN’s Human Rights Council?
c) How many three-year terms can a member serve on the Human Rights Council?

3. a) What is the purpose of the UN’s Human Rights Council? - What does it do?
b) List the newly elected members to the UN Human Rights Council.
c) In secret-ballot voting in the 193-member U.N. General Assembly:

• Pakistan received 169 votes
• Uzbekistan 169 (or 164)
• Nepal 150
• China 139
• and Saudi Arabia just 90 votes

Why do you think these countries, responsible for egregious human rights violations, received so many votes?

4. a) How many votes did China receive in 2016 as compared to last week’s vote?
b) Why do you think so many countries voted for China but not for Saudi Arabia?

5. Why did the UN General Assembly vote in 2006 to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights with the Human Rights Council?

6. Consider the following:

• U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the election of China, Russia and Cuba and last year’s election of Venezuela -- “countries with abhorrent human rights records” -- further validate the U.S. withdrawal from the Human Rights Council (in 2018). He said the U.S. has taken its own actions to punish “human rights abusers in Xinjiang (China), Myanmar, Iran, and elsewhere.” Secretary Pompeo said, “The U.N. General Assembly once again elected countries with abhorrent human rights records. These elections only further validate the U.S. decision to withdraw and use other venues and opportunities to protect and promote universal human rights” [generally through sanctions].
• Hillel Neuer, executive director of the watchdog group UN Watch said, “Regrettably the European Union (EU) has not said a word about hypocritical candidacies that only undermine the credibility and effectiveness of the UN human rights system. By turning a blind eye as human rights violators easily join and subvert the council, leading democracies will be complicit in the world body’s moral decline.” Neuer also said, “It will be an insult to their political prisoners and many other victims — and a defeat for the global cause of human rights — if the UN helps gross abusers act as champions and global judges of human rights. When the UN’s highest human rights body becomes a case of the foxes guarding the henhouse, the world’s victims suffer.”
• Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin tweeted, “Good that Saudi Arabia was not elected to the UN Human Rights Council, but the fact China was - while committing a genocide - is Orwellian.”

a) How effective do you think the UN’s Human Rights Council is in protecting victims of human rights abuses?
b) What do you think the world’s free countries (the U.S., the 27 member countries in the European Union, Canada and others) should do about the “Human Rights” council? Note: The U.S. is the largest provider of financial contributions to the United Nations, providing 22 percent of the entire UN budget in 2020, per wikipedia.