UN elects Nigeria’s Emuze into rights panel after tough contes

Nigeria’s candidate, Ambassador Peters Emuze, has been elected to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in a keenly-contested election held at the UN Headquarters, New York.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that Emuze was elected for a four-year tenure. He would be representing the African continent on the panel from 2019 to 2022.

His victory, in clinching one of the two Africa’s seats on the board of the committee for at least four years, is seen as a ‘feather’ for Nigeria.

Apart from signalling “prestige”, a member of the commission would also improve Nigeria’s future “diplomatic leverage”.

Emuze, who entered the race at the last minute, beat candidates of six other countries’ to clinch the first of the two seats for Africa.

While other countries and candidates had been campaigning for upward of one year, Nigeria’s candidate just jumped into the ring barely two months to the election.

Nigeria’s ambassador and deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Samson Itegboje, said it became impossible to get countries to step down for Nigeria, as all of them wanted to “go for broke."

Itegboje said: "The victory has raised our profile on the international stage. I don’t think there are many countries that can pull such outing, two months to the election. We can call it a miracle but it was a result of hard work, strategy and good relations.

“Also, we presented the best, as our candidate has got the required experience including being the former Charge d’Affaires at the Permanent Mission of Nigeria to the UN Offices in Geneva.’’

Speaking with newsmen after the election, Emuze pledged to ensure that Nigeria complies with its treaties on economic, social and cultural rights of the citizens.

Emuze remarked: “Nigeria long signed the treaty and that means Nigeria is ready to comply with various international human rights instruments as a responsible member of the international community."

Meanwhile, the UN human rights office, had said that routine extensions of the state of emergency in Turkey had led to profound human rights violations against many people.

The UN office expressed concerns about arbitrary deprivation of the right to work and to freedom of movement, torture and other ill-treatment, arbitrary detentions and infringements of the rights to freedom of association and expression.