By Michelle Nichols and Pesha Magid
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia narrowly failed on Wednesday to win a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, a blow to Riyadh’s efforts to boost the country’s rights reputation abroad and four years after it was rejected in a 2020 bid to join the 47-member body.
Saudi Arabia is spending billions to transform its global image from a country known for strict religious restrictions and human rights abuses into a tourism and entertainment hub under a plan its Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman launched, known as Vision 2030.
Members of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council are elected by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly in New York in a secret ballot in geographical groups to ensure even representation.
The Asia-Pacific group, which included Saudi Arabia, was the only competitive race on Wednesday with six candidates vying for five seats. Marshall Islands came in fifth with 124 votes, while Saudi Arabia missed out with 117 votes.
While the Human Rights Council does not have legally binding powers, its meetings raise scrutiny and it can mandate investigations to document abuses, which sometimes form the basis for war crimes prosecutions.
Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Czech Republic, North Macedonia, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Iceland, Spain and Switzerland were elected to the council. While Benin, Gambia and Qatar were reelected for a second three-year term. Council members cannot serve more than two consecutive terms.
The new elected members will begin their term on Jan. 1, 2025.
The vote on Wednesday came as anti-execution group Reprieve said Saudi Arabia has executed at least 212 people this year, surpassing the kingdom’s previous annual record of 196 people executed in 2022 and the 172 people executed in 2023.
The Saudi media office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mohammed Bin Salman, or MBS, has previously said the kingdom was working to reform its approach to the death penalty.
However since he took power in a palace coup in 2017, MBS has faced international censure for cracking down on dissent and for his alleged ordering of the killing of Saudi opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
The Saudi government has denied any involvement by the crown prince and has maintained that Khashoggi’s killing was carried out by a rogue group.
Despite not being a voting member, Saudi Arabia has been increasingly active in the Human Rights Council behind the scenes in recent years, say diplomats and rights groups.
Its lobbying helped to shut down the body’s war crimes investigations in Yemen in 2021 and it sought to counter a Western-led motion to increase monitoring of perpetrators of possible war crimes in Sudan, they said.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, Emma Farge and Pesha Majid; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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