Bangladesh has won membership to the United Nations Human Rights Council for the term 2015 – 2017, in an election in New York yesterday.
“Bangladesh was elected to the Human Rights Council with 149 votes,” the director general of the UN Wing at the foreign ministry told the Dhaka Tribune.
“The election is very important for us against the backdrop of the negative campaign against Bangladesh following the January 5 election,” Bangladesh Permanent Representative to the United Nations AK Abdul Momen told the Dhaka Tribune.
The country has served in the UNHRC twice and this is the third time Dhaka has expressed an interest in membership to the global human rights body.
Bangladesh served on the council from 2006-11 and withdrew for the 2012-14 period due to rules and regulations governing membership.
Dhaka has been campaigning hard for the elections to the UNHRC and International Telecommunications Union to be held on October 27.
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam was in New York last week for a last minute campaign effort.
Bangladesh has had a very good track record at winning elections to global bodies, he said.
This month Jatiya Sangsad Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury was elected chairperson of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association while ruling Awami League lawmaker Saber Hossain Chowdhury was elected the new president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
In recent times, the Bangladesh Ambassador to Brussels Ismat Jahan won the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) election while Dhaka also won membership to the UNESCO executive body and ILO governing body.
The UNHRC is a 47-member inter-governmental body dedicated to promoting and defending human rights.
Its membership consists of an equitable geographical distribution of seats across the world’s five regions: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eastern-Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Europe and others states.