China, Saudi Arabia and Russia are poised to join the United Nations Human Rights Council, raising alarm among rights groups who say the countries are among the world’s “worst rights violators”. The UN General Assembly is expected to hold elections on Tuesday for 15 seats in the 47-nation council, with the new members serving for three years from January 2021.

Hundreds of demonstrators have marched in the Algerian capital, Algiers, to mark the 32nd anniversary of a pro-democracy movement and renew calls for political change.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said he is sure Syrian fighters were operating in Nagorno-Karabakh, where Armenia and Azerbaijan are engaged in heavy fighting. Macron said he has evidence that fighters have traveled through the Turkish city of Gaziantep on their way to the conflict in the South Caucasus, where the fiercest clashes in years have killed nearly 130 people.

Foreign ministers from four Arab and European countries meeting in Jordan have said a two-state solution is the only path to end the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calling for a resumption of negotiations between the two sides. The top diplomats from France, Egypt, and Jordan held a meeting on Thursday in Amman. Germany’s Heiko Maas joined online as he was forced to go into quarantine a day earlier due to a coronavirus scare.