UN Watch condemned today's election of Mauritania, a country that allows 800,000 of its citizens to live as slaves, as Vice-President of the UN Human Rights Council.
In addition, the Geneva-based group also announced the failure of its yearlong campaign, with 55 MPs and NGOs, to get UNESCO to remove Syria from its human rights committee.
1. Mauritania Elected Today as VP of UN Human Rights Council
The UN Human Rights Council met today in Geneva and elected Mauritania as its Vice-President and Rapporteur for the next year, the second highest position at the world's top human rights body.
"It is obscene for the U.N. to use the occasion of Human Rights Day, when we commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to elect the world's worst enabler of slavery to this prestigious post," said Hillel Neuer, UN Watch executive director.
"The U.N. is making an arsonist head of the fire department. It defies both morality and common sense."
According to a recent report by the Guardian, "up to 800,000 people in a nation of 3.5 million remain chattels," with power and wealth overwhelmingly concentrated among lighter-skinned Moors, "leaving slave-descended darker-skinned Moors and black Africans on the edges of society."
via www.unwatch.org
h/t catallaxy files
