By Emma Farge
GENEVA, July 4 – The United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday rejected a bid by Eritrea to end the mandate of a U.N. expert investigating alleged abuses in the country, in a relief to Western diplomats who feared it would set a dangerous precedent for states seeking to escape scrutiny.
The motion brought by Eritrea caught many off guard and marked a rare attemptby a country subject to an investigative mandate to terminate it. It was defeated decisively, however, with just four voting for it, 25 rejecting it and 18 abstaining.
A counter-motion by the European Union to extend the mandate for a year then passed comfortably.
In his last report, Sudanese rights lawyer Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, who currently holds the U.N. expert position, described the situation in Eritrea as critical, highlighting cases of arbitrary detention and the extensive use of military service which is stoking migration.
African rights group DefendDefenders welcomed the extension of his mandate, saying the U.N. expert “plays an indispensable role, not only for the victims and survivors of Eritrea’s abuses, but also for the Eritrean diaspora.”
The delegate for the European Union said ending the mandate would have allowed “impunity and repression to deepen in silence.”
Eritrea’s chargé d’affaires Habtom Zerai Ghirmai accused the EU of acting out of a “neo-colonial saviour mentality complex”.
“The continued extension of the Special Rapporteur’s mandate is an affront to reason and justice,” he said.
Supporters of Eritrea’s motion included Iran, Sudan and Russia – all of which are subject to their own investigations mandated by the 47-member council.
China also spoke in favour of Eritrea, calling such an investigation mandate a waste of resources.
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Emma Farge reports on the U.N. beat and Swiss news from Geneva since 2019. She has produced a string of exclusives on diplomacy, the environment and global trade and covered Switzerland’s first war crimes trial. Her Reuters career started in 2009 covering oil swaps from London and she has since written about the West African Ebola outbreak, embedded with U.N. troops in north Mali and was the first reporter to enter deposed Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh’s estate. She co-authored a winning story for the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize on Russia’s diplomatic isolation in 2022 and was also part of a team of journalists nominated in 2012 as Pulitzer finalists in the international reporting category for coverage of the Libyan revolution. She holds a BA from Oxford University (First) and an MSc from the LSE in International Relations. She is currently on the board of the press association for UN correspondents in Geneva (ACANU).
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The United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday rejected a bid by Eritrea to end the mandate of a U.N. expert investigating alleged abuses in the country, in a relief to Western diplomats who feared it would set a dangerous precedent for states seeking to escape scrutiny.
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