The Kingdom of Morocco won a vote on Wednesday to lead the United Nations Human Rights Council after a heated showdown with South Africa.
The Moroccan candidate, Ambassador Omar Zniber, received 30 votes, and his South African opponent, Ambassador Mxolisi Nkosi, secured 17 in a secret ballot in Geneva.
In reaction to this vote viewed as a diplomatic acheivement, the moroccan minister of forien affairs, Nasser Bourita, said that the vote shows the credibility of Morocco and reflects it’s own committement to human rigths issues.
During a press conference organized on the occasion of the visit of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria to Morocco, Nasser Bourita declared that Morocco’s election reflects the international community’s trust in the kingdom’s capacity to lead efforts aimed at promoting and protecting human rights,
Morocco was able to win this vote despite the disinformation campaign led by Algeria and the Polisario to discredit the Kingdom. The Algerian press has published several articles and reports in order to discredit the image of the Kingdom in the hope of pushing the member states of the Human Rights Council to vote against it.