The General Assembly has elected 15 countries to the United Nations Human Rights Council for a three-year term of office beginning on January 1, 2015.

In one round of secret balloting at UN Headquarters in New York on October 21, the Assembly elected Albania, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Ghana, Latvia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Paraguay, Portugal and Qatar.

Bolivia, Botswana, Congo, India and Indonesia, whose terms were due to expire at the end of this year, were re-elected.

The distribution of seats for the current election was as follows: four seats allotted to the African States Group; four for the Asia-Pacific Group; two for the Eastern European Group; three for the Latin American and Caribbean Group; and two for the Western European and Other States Group.

Members of the Council serve for a period of three years and are not eligible for immediate re-election after serving two consecutive terms.

The Councils’ outgoing members are: Austria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Chile, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Kuwait, Peru, the Philippines and Romania.

Created by the Assembly in 2006, the 47-member Council is an inter-governmental body within the UN system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them.-VNA