In a decision that reads like the punchline to a dystopian joke, China, Russia, and Turkey have secured seats on the United Nations’ top human rights oversight body. According to UN Watch, these regimes—routinely condemned for stifling free speech, jailing dissidents, and surveilling citizens—were quietly elected to the UN Committee on NGOs, a body tasked with deciding which civil society groups gain official consultative status. In short: the watchdogs have handed the leash to the wolves.
The move grants Beijing, Moscow, and Ankara veto power over human rights organizations seeking access to the UN system. It’s a bureaucratic coup—a silent but sweeping victory for the world’s authoritarian bloc. China, already infamous for its Great Firewall and growing digital repression campaign, now gets to help decide which NGOs can raise human rights abuses within the UN.
Russia’s election comes amid a growing list of international sanctions and condemnations, including the blacklisting of the British Council, while it continues to suffocate free expression at home and support authoritarian violence abroad. Turkey, under Erdoğan’s iron grip, has jailed more journalists than any democracy would dare admit and weaponized its influence over diaspora organizations in Europe.
The structure of the UN is no stranger to contradiction—Saudi Arabia once chaired a women’s rights panel—but this latest development formalizes a new era. The world’s most egregious violators of human dignity now have a say in who gets to challenge them.
Critics argue the move renders the UN’s human rights mechanisms functionally obsolete. “It’s like putting arsonists in charge of the fire brigade,” said one UN insider, who requested anonymity. UN Watch and other NGOs are calling for procedural reform, but reform inside a system being co-opted from within may be a pipe dream.
If human rights now answer to the whims of Xi, Putin, and Erdoğan, then global accountability has finally been gagged—and no one can object unless their paperwork is first approved… by Beijing.