UAE and Saudi Arabia abstain in the vote against Russia

Russia has been expelled from the United Nations Human Rights Council with 93 countries voting for it in the UN General Assembly, 24 against and 58 abstentions. Among those who abstained include countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The representative of both the countries presented persuasive arguments as to why the move is not a helpful one to end the war in Ukraine. The motion to expel Russia from the Council came from the Western group, led by the United States and the European Union members after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelansky while addressing the UN Security Council showed footage of civilians killed in Bucha in Ukraine, often from close range and sometimes shot through the head and the eyes. The gruesome footage caused much anguish and outrage among the members of the world body. Zelensky demanded that Russia must be expelled from its position as a permanent member of the Security Council.  

While condemning the violence against civilians in the Ukraine war, the UAE permanent representative at the UN, Lana Nusseibeh, said “Civilians are bearing the brunt of this conflict and this must end, they must be spared, and parties must comply with their obligations under international law.” But she explained the reasons for the UAE abstaining from the vote to expel Russia from the Human Rights Council. She said, “determining the facts on the ground is important for justice to be rendered to victims but also, in the longer term, to allow communities to heal, reconcile and build sustainable peace.”  

As a member of the Human Rights Council, the UAE had favoured the setting up of an independent international commission to inquire into the violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the war in Ukraine. She said that the commission should be able to complete its work , and she declared, “Today, we decided to abstain on this resolution because we need to ensure that any decision we take in this GA (General Assembly) is based on due process.” She also made the strong point that international forums are not clubs for like-minded people. She said there is need to preserve spaces “in the multilateral arena to talk to each other and not at each other.” And the more important point she made was that the UN was based on “the premise of dialogue and constructive achievement, with each other and even with those who hold opposing views to us.”

The Saudi Arabian deputy permanent  representative to the UN, Mohammed Abdulaziz Alateek,  termed the expulsion of Russia from the Human Rights Council as an “escalatory step”. He said that his country believed that human rights should not be subject to “selectivity, double standards and politicisation.” He explained the reasons for abstaining from the vote, pointing out that it would only aggravate the situation and it would affect the peace talks now on between Ukraine and Russia. Alateek made the stronger point that the expulsion of Russia sets a “serious precedent that threatened multilateral work and runs counter to the principles of international law.”  

The arguments presented by UAE’s Lana Nusseibeh and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Abdulaziz Atateek emphasise that peace in Ukraine cannot be achieved by antagonising and isolating Russia and that this would be a negative approach. The two reflected the opinion of the 58 countries who had abstained, and it is not a small number either. It was necessary that the independent views of those who disagreed with the European and American should be expressed clearly and emphatically. It was necessary to show that the Western countries have adopted the most biased view against Russia, and it will only make things worse in Ukraine as well as in the rest of Europe.