64 candidate contest election to 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council

AP Worldstream; May 08, 2006

Sixty-four countries are running for the 47 seats on the new
U.N. Human Rights Council in Tuesday’s election in the U.N. General
Assembly.

To ensure global representation, Africa and Asia will have 13 seats
each; Latin America and the Caribbean eight seats; Western nations,
seven seats; and Eastern Europe, six seats.

Countries must receive an absolute majority of the 191 U.N. member
states _ or 96 votes _ and the top vote-getters in the different
regions will be declared winners.

Here is a list of the candidates by region:

_African States (13 seats): Algeria, Cameroon, Djibouti, Gabon, Ghana,
Kenya, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa,
Tunisia, Zambia.

_Asian States (13 seats): Bangladesh, Bahrain, China, India,
Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Malaysia,
Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Thailand.

_Eastern European States (6 seats): Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania,
Russia, Slovenia, Ukraine.

_Latin American and Caribbean States (8 seats): Argentina, Brazil,
Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela.

_Western European and Other States (7 seats): Britain, Canada,
Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland.