United Nations diplomats should worry about the “wave of populism” sweeping across the world, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned Wednesday.
“The U.N. is missing the growing discontent and growing distrust among the people it’s supposed to represent,” Haley said at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The fact is, a wave is building throughout the world. It’s a wave of populism that is challenging institutions like the United Nations and shaking them to their foundations.”
Haley, the former South Carolina governor, invoked the populist movements that drove so much of international politics in 2016 as a set-up for a new policy priority at the United Nations. She plans to demand, as president of the U.N. Security Council in 2017, that the panel hold sessions devoted to human rights — a topic that could lead to sharper clashes with Russia and China, two nations the U.S. regards as human rights abusers that hold veto power on the council.
“It might surprise many Americans to learn that human rights violations have not been considered an appropriate subject for discussion in the Security Council,” Haley said. “This is the rule the club has created. The Security Council has never had a session focused exclusively on human rights.”
She pointed to the Arab Spring and the failure of the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran, when a young woman was shot on camera by government security forces, as examples of the UN ignoring human rights. “The international elite had other priorities for Iran,” she said, echoing those who criticized the Obama administration for declining to support the revolution as it prepared for Iran nuclear talks.
Haley didn’t comment directly on the anti-corruption protests that roiled Russia over the weekend, but she said she wouldn’t shy away from such clashes in the Security Council meetings.
“We are seeing more and more conflicts in the world,” Haley said. “And if you look at it, if there is a government that’s abusing its own people, that is not allowing them the freedoms and the democracy that they need to be successful, they’re going to push back, they’re going to fight their government, and then, they’re going to start getting desperate and then they’re going to do more, and then you’re going to see things break out. So, Russia doesn’t have to agree with me on human rights, but Russia needs to hear it just like every other country needs to hear it.”
