The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations System. The UNHRC is the successor to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR, herein CHR), and is a subsidiary body of the United Nations General Assembly. The council works closely with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and engages the United Nations' Special procedures.

The General Assembly established the UNHRC by adopting a resolution (A/RES/60/251) on 15 March 2006, in order to replace the previous CHR, which had been heavily criticised for allowing countries with poor human rights records to be members.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and former High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson have criticized the council for acting according to political considerations as opposed to human rights. Specifically, Secretaries General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki Moon, the council's president Doru Costea, the European Union, Canada and the United States have accused the council of focusing disproportionately on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The United States boycotted the Council during the George W. Bush administration, but reversed its position on it during the Obama administration.

Hillel C. Neuer is executive director of UN Watch, a human rights NGO in Geneva, Switzerland.

Originally from Montreal, Neuer has written on law, politics and international affairs for publications such as the International Herald Tribune, Juriste International, Commentary, The New Republic Online and the Christian Science Monitor. He appears regularly before the UN Human Rights Council, intervening for a range of causes including the rape victims of Darfur, political prisoners in Cuba, and Middle East peace. He recently testified as an expert witness before a hearing of the U.S. Congress on UN reform, and is regularly quoted by major media organizations including the New York Times, Al Jazeera ,Die Welt, Le Figaro, Reuters, Al Ahram. Neuer has debated UN human rights issues on CNN, Fox News, and the BBC.

Prior to joining UN Watch, Neuer practiced commercial and civil rights litigation at the international law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. Active as a human rights defender, Neuer was cited by the Federal Court of New York for the high quality of his pro bono advocacy on a precedent-setting First Amendment case for prisoners’ rights and freedom of religion, as reported in AIDS Litigation Digest and the New York Law Journal. Neuer served as a law clerk to the Supreme Court of Israel and a Graduate Fellow at the Shalem Center think tank. He holds a BA in intellectual history and political science from Concordia University, a BCL and LLB from the McGill University Faculty of Law, and an LLM in comparative constitutional law from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Neuer is a member of the New York bar and co-author of the Annotated Copyright Act of Canada and Directors and Officers—A Canadian Legal Manual.

Anne Bayefsky is a human rights scholar and activist. She currently directs the Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and is a barrister and solicitor of the Ontario Bar. Her areas of expertise include international human rights law, equality rights, and constitutional human rights law.

Bayefsky holds a B.A., M.A. and LL.B. from the University of Toronto and an M.Litt. from Oxford University. She has served as the director of York's Centre for Refugee Studies, project director for the university's Human Rights Treaty Study; member of Canadian delegations to international meetings, such as the UN Human Rights Commissions 1993-1996, the UN General Assembly in 1984 and 1989, the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, and in 1995, a delegate of the American Society of International Law to the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women. She was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute

Currently, she is a member of the International Law Association Committee on International Human Rights Law and Practice; Editor-in-Chief of the Series "Refugees and Human Rights", published by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague; and editor of Eye on the UN. She also sits on the Board of Advisors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a non-profit think-tank focusing on issues of United States and Israeli national security.