The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday suspended Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council over reports of “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” by Russian troops in Ukraine.
The vote was supported by 93 members, while 24 voted against it and 58 abstained.
The U.S.-led resolution needed a two-thirds majority of the voting members to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council.
The text expresses grave concern for the humanitarian situation in Ukraine attacked by Moscow’s troops. It is the third resolution in a month in which the international community has come out against Russia’s actions in the war against Kyiv.
The Geneva-based Human Rights Council consists of 47 members. Russia joined the body in January 2021 as one of 15 countries elected by the General Assembly to serve three-year terms.
Under the 2006 resolution that established the Council, the General Assembly can suspend a country from membership if it commits “gross and systematic violations of human rights”.
Meanwhile, the US and Britain announced new sanctions against Russia after Ukraine said hundreds of civilians were found dead near Kyiv, including the town of Bucha, after the pullout of Russian troops. The measures taken by US target Russia’s top banks and two daughters of President Vladimir Putin, while Britain sanctioned two banks — and vowed to eliminate all Russian oil and gas imports by year-end.
“They burned families. Families. Yesterday we found again a new family: father, mother, two children. Little, little children, two. One was a little hand, you know,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
US President Joe Biden also joined in describing the horrors in Bucha.
“Civilians executed in cold blood, bodies dumped into mass graves, the sense of brutality and inhumanity left for all the world to see, unapologetically,” Biden said.
The Kremlin denies responsibility and has claimed Kyiv staged civilian deaths — with Putin on Wednesday accusing Ukrainian authorities of “crude and cynical provocations” in Bucha.
The Russian withdrawal from areas around Kyiv and the north is part of a shift towards Ukraine’s southeast, in a bid to create a land bridge between occupied Crimea and Moscow-backed separatist statelets in the Donbas region.
‘Indifference is a friend of the enemy’: Ukraine at UNGA
Earlier at the UNGA’s emergency session to vote on the suspension of Russia from UNHRC, Ukraine’s representative to UN Sergiy Kyslytsya said, “We are in a unique situation now, when on the territory of another sovereign state, a member of the UNHRC commits horrific human rights violations and abuses that would be equated to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The suspension of rights of membership of the Russian Federation in UNHRC is not an option, but a duty.”
Russia is the not first country to have been suspended from the UNHRC. Libya was thrown out around 11 years ago after a UNHRC resolution adopted through a consensus. The move was in response to the Libyan government’s crackdown on protestors. The UNGA suspended Libya using the provisions of resolution 60/251.
According to the rules, a UNHRC member can be suspended if it has persistently committed systematic human rights violations during its membership. The resolution should have the support of the two-third members present and voting in the General Assembly, with abstentions not counted as votes.
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