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International-UN-NGOs
Venezuela Aspires to U.N. Human Rights Council
2012-11-13
[Latino.Fox News] The U.N. General Assembly will select today 18 new members for its Human Rights Council, and outrage is roaring in some circles over the fact that Venezuela is one of the candidates.

Other countries human rights
...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions...
groups have criticized as unqualified candidates are Ivory Coast, Æthiopia, Gabon, Kazakhstan and Pakistain.

The Human Rights Council was created in March 2006 to replace the U.N.'s widely discredited and highly politicized Human Rights Commission. But the council has also been widely criticized for failing to change many of the commission's practices, including putting much more emphasis on Israel than on any other country and electing candidates accused of serious human rights violations.

Among those leaving the 47-member council at the end of this year are China, Cuba and Russia.

In the case of Venezuela, critics say President Hugo Chavez accumulated near-absolute power over the past decade thanks to his control of the National Assembly and the media, friendly judges in the courts, and pliant institutions such as the Central Bank. "Venezuela under Mr. Chavez has no place at this table," said the Washington Post in its editorial page Sunday.

Chavez, who last month won one of the closest elections in Venezuela's history, announced in July his decision to pull out Venezuela from the American Convention on Human Rights, considered one of the pillars of the legal regulations aimed at defending human rights in the Americas. The announcement was followed a few days later by a Human Rights Watch
... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world...
report stating that Venezuelan government "freely intimidates, censors and prosecutes its critics."

Regarding the controversial U.N. vote scheduled for Monday, Amnesia Amnesty International's U.N. representative, Jose Luis Dias, said member states "should return a blank ballot if they feel a candidate does not meet the high human rights standards expected of council members."
Posted by:Fred

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