India re-elected to key United Nation committee on elimination of racial discrimination

United Nations, Dec 1 (PTI) India has been re-elected to a key UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination. The country's nominee Ambassador Dilip Lahiri was re-elected to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a body under the UN Human Rights system, for a three-year term beginning January 20, 2012. He secured 147 votes out of 167 cast in the elections held at the UN headquarters here yesterday. Lahiri has been a member of the CERD since 2008 and will complete his current term on January 19, 2012. India's Ambassador to the UN Hardeep Singh Puri said he was "very pleased" at the CERD win, adding that "we had a good candidate." Lahiri has been India's ambassador to Peru, Bolivia, Spain and France and has vast experience of multilateral diplomacy in the UN, the Non-aligned Movement and the Commonwealth covering security and disarmament, international law, human rights and social issues. He has supervised the preparation of India's reports to the monitoring bodies of various UN human rights instruments and also participated in the process of amending domestic laws to conform to UN human rights instruments to which India became party. Other members who were elected were from Romania, Colombia, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Guatemala, US, Russia and China. CERD is a body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by its state parties, which are obliged to submit regular reports to it on how the rights are being implemented. CERD meets in Geneva and holds two three-week sessions annually. PTI