By IANS,
United Nations : India’s nominee Dilip Lahiri has been re-elected to serve on the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) for a three year term, beginning Jan 20, 2012.
Lahiri, who has had a distinguished career in the Indian Foreign Service for close to four decades before retiring in 2005, secured 147 votes in the elections held here Wednesday. Huang Yong’an of China was also elected with 148 votes.
Other elected members include Romania, Colombia, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Guatemala and the US.
Lahiri, a member of the CERD since 2008, has previously served as Indian ambassador to Peru, Bolivia, Spain and France.
He has had long experience of multilateral diplomacy in the UN, the Nonaligned Movement and the Commonwealth covering security and disarmament, international law, human rights and social issues, climate change and environment.
Lahiri has supervised the preparation of India’s national 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.
The 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.