Australia is all but a shoo-in to win a seat on the United Nations human rights council after one of its rivals pulled out.
France and Spain were vying with Australia for the two open seats but French diplomats decided last week to delay their country’s bid.
The foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, hopes Australia will be able to serve a term from 2018-20 on the council with distinction.
“There’s been significant support for us,” she told ABC TV on Sunday. “There still has to be a vote in October but, at this stage, the two vacancies should be filled by Australia and Spain.”
Bishop said Australia had been encouraged by like-minded countries to run for the seat.
“I have been personally delighted with the level of support that Australia has received from around the world for our bid to serve on the UN human rights council,” she said. “We certainly will have a very vocal voice on the issue of human rights and we’ll bring to it the pragmatic, principled approach that we bring to all our international relations and engagements.”
In April, Nauru whistleblowers told a global women’s event in New York that Australia should be blocked from winning a seat on the UN body, because of systemic physical and sexual abuse in the island camps, and the international law violations of its indefinite detention regime.
Other arms of the UN, including the special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, and the UN committee against torture, have criticised offshore detention as unlawful.
Lobbying for a seat in a speech to the council in February, the minister for international development and the Pacific, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, said Australia’s bid for a council seat, its first, reflected a “commitment to advance human rights”.
The council is not without controversy. Current members include Egypt, China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia, all countries with their own human rights abuses – including extrajudicial executions, arbitrary imprisonment and restrictions on freedoms of association, religion and speech.
• Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
