UNITED NATIONS - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has proposed Jordan’s UN ambassador, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, to replace Navi Pillay, a harsh critic of Israel’s policies in occupied Arab territories,  as the United Nations’ human rights chief based in Geneva, according to an official announcement on Friday evening.
Pillay, a South African jurist who in 2012 was given an abbreviated second term of only two years due to criticism of the United States, which protested her denunciations of Israel, according to UN diplomats.
Prince Zeid’s nomination will now go before the 193-nation UN General Assembly for approval. Prince Zeid, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Cambridge University, has previously served as Jordan’s ambassador to the United States and Mexico.
 He was also a political affairs officer in UNPROFOR, the UN peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia during the Balkan conflict.
The post of High Commissioner for Human Rights was established by UNGA in 1993 to promote and protect the effective enjoyment by all people of all civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, including the right to development. The UNGA resolution stipulates that the High Commissioner should function as the UN official with principal responsibility for global human rights efforts.
The High Commissioner is appointed by the UN Secretary-General and approved by UNGA, with due regard to geographical rotation. Appointments are at the level of Under-Secretary-General, for a fixed term of four years, with the possibility of one renewal for another fixed term of four years.
The Jordanian diplomat who will replace Prince Zeid as Amman’s UN ambassador is Dina Kawar, who will become the sixth female to head a delegation on the UN Security Council. Jordan will be on the 15-nation council through the end of 2015.