On March 15, the United Nations General Assembly voted 170–4 to create a new Human Rights Council, effectively dissolving the oft-criticized Commission on Human Rights. Candidates for the Council will need to be elected by an absolute majority of 96 votes in order to secure a position, and once elected members can serve a maximum of two consecutive terms.
On December 18, 2005 Bolivians made history at the polls, as 54 percent of the country’s voters chose Evo Morales, an indigenous Aimara leader of the combative coca-growers’ unions, to become president.
Morales and his party, the Movement to Socialism (MAS), swept the elections in the first round with an absolute majority, trouncing competitors on the right: one a cement mogul and fast food franchise owner, the other a businessman-economist cultivated by the United States as its preferred choice.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.