What if the UN Human Rights Council were composed of human rights heroes?
Seventy years ago, in May 1946, the first meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights—headed by Eleanor Roosevelt and René Cassin—recommended that the new body be composed not of governments, but of highly qualified persons. If only.
Sadly, most UNHRC members today are dictatorships, including China, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
In this photo, UN Watch dared to imagine what the world would be like if, instead, the UNHRC were made up of human rights heroes.
From left to right, here is our dream team, who joined UN Watch for the 2016 Geneva Summit for Human Rights:
• Orhan Kemal Cengiz, Turkish human rights lawyer
• Svitlana Zalishchuk, Ukrainian MP & pro-democracy activist
• Darya Safai, Iranian women’s rights activist
• Vian Dakhil, Yazidi Member of Iraqi Parliament
• Ensaf Haidar, Wife of Saudi political prisoner Raif Badawi
• Polina Nemirovskaia, Russian human rights activist
• Yang Jianli, President of Initiatives for China, former political prisoner
• Anastasia Lin, Activist for human rights in China, 2015 Miss World Canada
• Antonietta Ledezma, Venezuelan dissident, daughter of political prisoner Mayor Antonio Ledezma of Caracas
