Armenia denied seat in UN Human Rights body

The 47-nation Human Rights Council was elected by secret ballot late Tuesday in place of the UN's discredited Human Rights Commission that was disbanded last March.

Armenia needed the backing of an absolute majority of the 191 UN states to win one of the six council seats set aside for Eastern Europe. Only 70 of them voted for its candidacy despite upbeat forecasts made by the head of the Armenian mission at the UN headquarters in New York, Armen Martirosian, ahead of the vote.

"All of our embassies have worked very consistently and effectively in various continents, and I think we have all the prerequisites to represent Armenia at the first Human Rights Council," Martirosian told RFE/RL.

The Foreign Ministry in Yerevan sought to play down the fiasco on Wednesday. A written statement by the head of the ministry’s department on international organizations, Valeri Mkrtumian, noted the fact that even established democracies like Hungary and Latvia failed to join the council. "Armenia will continue to actively collaborate with all UN structures, including the Human Rights Council," he said.

To add insult to injury, Armenia's arch-rival Azerbaijan was elected to the Human Rights Council, getting 95 and 103 General Assembly votes in the first and second rounds of voting respectively.

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