Just when you think the U.N. can’t get any more pathetic.

(Reuters) – Syria and Iran are planning to run for a spot on the U.N. Human Rights Council later this year, U.N. diplomats told Reuters on Wednesday, despite criticism from watchdog groups about widespread rights abuses in both countries.

The General Assembly’s annual elections for the United Nations’ 47-nation Geneva-based human rights body will be held later this year in New York. There will be 14 seats available for three-year terms beginning in January 2014.

From the so-called Asia group, which includes the Middle East and Asia, seven countries – China, Iran, Jordan, Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Vietnam – are vying for four seats, U.N. diplomats said on condition of anonymity.

One diplomat predicted that Syria and Iran would fail in their bids to join the U.N. rights watchdog when the 193-nation General Assembly votes in the fall, while another said the upcoming election would be a “comedy.”

Hillel Neuer, the head of UN Watch, a Geneva-based advocacy group that monitors the work of the United Nations, said “countries that murder and torture their own people must not be allowed to become the world’s judges on human rights.