The United Nations Human Rights Council is meant to criticize human rights abuses around the world. Just don’t expect it to say anything about civilian killings in Libya, the slain Sudanese people who had neither freedom of expression nor presumption of innocence, or any of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s human rights abuses.
Why? All three countries now have a seat at the table. On Thursday, the U.N. General Assembly voted to induct all three countries into the ranks of human rights arbiters, despite their blatant disregard for human rights. This is exactly the type of hypocrisy that led the United States to withdraw from the Human Rights Council last year.
So far, most of the media has focused on the high-profile problem of Venezuela. Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley warned that the addition would “make a mockery of human rights.”
“The Maduro regime in Venezuela is among the world’s worst human-rights abusers,” she wrote in the Miami Herald. “Venezuela is the last country that should sit on a council that’s supposed to protect human rights.”
With the inclusion of Venezuela on its human rights council, my colleague Tom Rogan explained, “the United Nations hammered another nail into its credibility coffin.” Under Maduro’s authoritarian regime, he said, “Venezuela’s child mortality rate has skyrocketed and medicines have disappeared.”
As if this all wasn’t bad enough, the socialist dictatorship of Venezuela wasn’t the only egregious addition to the council.
While the Second Libyan Civil War rages on, the people of Libya have been subject to torture, unreasonable arrest, and death.
“All sides to the conflict have carried out indiscriminate attacks in heavily populated areas leading to deaths of civilians and unlawful killings,” reported Amnesty International. “Armed groups have abducted, arbitrarily arrested and indefinitely detained thousands of people.”
Oh, and the Libyan coast guard would rather leave refugees to drown at sea than let them be saved by rescue vessels from nongovernmental organizations.
In neighboring Sudan, “Security forces targeted opposition party members, human rights defenders, students and political activists for arbitrary arrest, detention and other abuses,” according to Amnesty International. “The rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly were arbitrarily restricted.”
In June, Americans turned their social media profiles blue in solidarity with protesters facing a violent military crackdown and an internet blackout.
With its addition of not only Venezuela, but also Libya and Sudan, the U.N. has proved that it cares little about curbing human rights abuses around the world. Haley was right: Human rights have been “cheapened by an institution that falsely calls itself the Human Rights Council.”
