Membership to the Council is open to all member states and secret-ballot elections are held every year, according to a UN website. Upon election, states serve three-year terms and are not eligible for immediate re-election after serving two consecutive terms.

Candidates within the UN's African Group, which has five vacant seats, include Ethiopia, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Sudan. The candidacies of Venezuela and Pakistan are also being protested by UN Watch and other human rights groups.

Mark Lagon, a visiting professor at Georgetown University and a former U.S. State Department official, said Al-Bashir's regime fomented genocide in Darfur and has since returned to terrorizing innocent people in South Sudan.

"It lacks credibility to judge others, and the Council lacks it too with it as a Member," Lagon told FoxNews.com in an email.

Neuer said Pillay, a South African, should be a "moral voice" and urge other African nations to call for "unequivocal opposition to Sudan's scandalous" bid for the election that will add 18 member nations in all.