Ghana is one of 58 countries throughout the world that voted against Russia's suspension from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The suspension was approved by the UN Security Council on Thursday, April 7, 2022, with 93 countries voting in favor and 24 voting against it.
With the exception of countries that abstained from voting, the resolution received a two-thirds majority of those voting.
58 countries abstained from the process, including South Africa, Egypt, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Cambodia.
The resolution was voted down by Russia, China, Cuba, and North Korea, among others. They want Russia to continue to be a member of the UN Human Rights Council.
Russia was one of 15 countries elected by the General Assembly to serve a three-year term in the organization in January 2021.
However, under the 2006 UN General Assembly resolution that formed the Council, a country's membership can be suspended if it commits grave and systematic breaches of human rights.
The decision to suspend Russia was made during a special emergency session on the war in Ukraine in response to reports of Russian forces' violations, including distressing photographs from Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, where hundreds of civilian bodies were discovered.
Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukrainian ambassador, asked countries to vote in favor of the resolution before the vote.
Following the procedure, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba praised the members who voted to remove Russia from the council, emphasizing that "war criminals have no place in UN bodies focused at defending human rights."
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