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.

Approximately seven hundred Kosovo Romani, Ashkaelia and Egyptian refugees -- including around three hundred and fifty children - have been living in a "collective center" in the Orizari municipality of the Macedonian capital Skopje, sheltered under short-term, temporary ‘surrogate protection’ since being ethnically cleansed from Kosovo in 1999.