Cuba and Russia, among others, are therefore assured election to another three-year term. The Cuban government is in the midst of its worst human rights crackdown in a decade, while Russia has failed for three years in a row to invite key U.N. monitors to investigate its conduct in Chechnya.

“Cuba and Russia each have very serious human rights problems and have failed to cooperate with the commission despite many resolutions against them,” said Joanna Weschler, U.N. representative for Human Rights Watch. “It’s outrageous that they should be rewarded for this performance with another term on the commission.”

Weschler criticized Latin American and East European countries that could have nominated additional candidates and made the election a contested one, but chose instead to countenance the election of Cuba and Russia from their regional groups.

The commission has a growing number of members with extremely poor human rights records, who increasingly operate as a bloc to defeat or eviscerate any human rights criticism of individual governments at the commission.

Human Rights Watch supports the establishment of minimum criteria for commission membership that would include: the ratification and basic observance of key human rights treaties; cooperation with U.N. human rights monitoring system, including standing invitations to U.N. rapporteurs; and a recent record that is free of commission criticism.

Several governments and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights have recently also highlighted the need for membership criteria.