COMMUNITY

On 15 June, States Parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) will elect nine new members to the UN Human Rights Committee. On 12 May, together with the Geneva Human Rights Hub and the Centre for Civil and Political Rights (CCPR), GQUAL convened a public virtual dialogue, where 9 out of the 16 candidates who have been nominated by Member States accepted to participate. The event intended to enhance visibility, foster transparency, and disseminate information about the electoral process.

 Currently, 6 out of 18 Committee members are women. From 1977 to 1984, the Committee was composed entirely of men. Women’s representation increased slowly and unevenly over time, reaching its highest point in 2017, when women held 8 of the 18 seats (44.4%). The Committee has historically remained one of the UN Treaty Bodies with the lowest representation of women among its membership.

The upcoming election will therefore be critical for the Committee’s gender composition. Four of the current six women members will conclude their mandates in 2026, and for the nine seats currently open, States have nominated 16 candidates: 9 men and 7 women. Achieving gender parity on the Committee would require States Parties to elect all seven women candidates.

This reality highlights a persistent structural challenge in international elections: when gender parity is not meaningfully considered at the national nomination stage, the candidate pool itself becomes constrained. As a result, States Parties face a more limited possibility of advancing gender balance at the election stage while simultaneously considering other important statutory criteria and priorities, including expertise, independence, equitable geographical representation, representation of different civilizations and principal legal systems, and other factors they may legitimately wish to weigh in the electoral process. 

Parity cannot be achieved through elections alone. It requires intentional action beginning at the national level, including transparent and inclusive nomination procedures that actively seek and support highly qualified women candidates. 

In addition to gender balance, attention should also be given to regional representation to ensure a more equitable and diverse composition of the Committee. The current pool of candidates includes 6 nominees from Africa, 5 from GRULAC, 3 from Eastern Europe, and 1 candidate each from the Asia-Pacific Group and the WEOG. While the UN regional groups provide an important framework for assessing geographic distribution, they do not by themselves fully capture global diversity or inequalities in representation within the international system. Important disparities persist within regional groups, including between candidates from the Global North and Global South, and between countries with very different levels of access, influence, and representation in international decision-making spaces. 

Electing members with the necessary expertise, independence, and diversity is vital to ensure the effective fulfillment of the Committee’s mandate. Ensuring gender and geographical balance, as well as the representation of different civilizations and principal legal systems, is also crucial to the Committee’s legitimacy and effectiveness. A more representative Committee strengthens not only the diversity of perspectives informing its work, but also public confidence in the universality, fairness, and inclusiveness of the Treaty Body system. 

 This requires knowing each candidate’s vision for the mandate, evaluating their competence, and assessing their commitment to fulfilling the mandate with a gender perspective. Civil society and victims who frequently engage with the Human Rights Committee should also have the opportunity to participate in this process, and spaces such as this public dialogue are key to advancing this goal.

Nine candidates participated in the public dialogue, answering questions submitted by the co-organizers on their qualifications, experience, and priorities for the Human Rights Committee. The exchange explored key issues related to the role and functioning of the Committee, including the independence and impartiality of members, the budget cuts and limitations increasingly affecting the operations and the capacity of Treaty Bodies to operate effectively, the transparency of national nomination processes, among other key challenges. Candidates also reflected on priorities for strengthening the Committee’s impact and discussed the importance of gender and geographical representation, and diversity — including the need to strengthen a gender perspective across the Committee’s mandate and work.

We extend our gratitude to all candidates for participating and engaging in the dialogue and to our partner organizations who made this event possible.

Public dialogues like this one, and the active participation of civil society, are indispensable for promoting accountability, strengthening the legitimacy of the election process, and building human rights bodies that are representative, transparent, and effective. 

It is now the responsibility of States Parties to uphold these principles by electing members who meet the highest standards of expertise and independence and contribute to sustaining gender parity, equitable geographic representation and representation of different civilizations and principal legal systems within the Human Rights Committee. Doing so also requires States to take these considerations seriously from the earliest stages of national nomination processes, since the diversity and representativeness of the candidate pool ultimately shape the possibilities and limitations of the election itself. 

___________

*This event is part of an initiative led by the Geneva Human Rights Hub and supported by GQUAL, aimed at promoting greater transparency around the UN Treaty Bodies’ election processes. In 2026, 2025 and 2024, similar events were organized around the elections to the CAT, CEDAW, CRPD, and the Human Rights Committee, together with partner organizations working on these issues.