Last Tuesday, nearly 18 months after first warning of such a move, the U.S. pulled out of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Explaining the decision, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley stated, “this disproportionate focus and unending hostility toward Israel is clear proof that the council is motivated by political bias, not by human rights.”
Predictably, the non-governmental organizations most intertwined with the Council, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, launched into hysterics. Ken Roth raged, “Trump has decided that ‘America First’ means ignoring the suffering of civilians in Syria and ethnic minorities in Myanmar at the United Nations.” Amnesty tweeted, “Ten good reasons for the #US to leave the UN Human Rights Council” with a blank list of items.
These overwrought lamentations demonstrate that the U.S. withdrawal is a serious blow to the UNHRC and its supporters. As the world’s only superpower, the U.S. presence adds tremendous credibility to the UN body. There was consternation when President George W. Bush refused to join the council upon its creation in 2006, primarily because of its singling out of Israel. And when Obama reversed policy, becoming a member in hopes it could reform the body from within, there was celebration.
The council’s prejudicial history relating to Israel is long and sorry. The UNHRC was created to serve as a “reform” of its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, which was disbanded largely because of its extreme obsession with Israel. Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan noted at the time that “the selectivity and politicizing of [the Commission’s] activities [were] in danger of bringing the entire U.N. system into disrepute.”
Yet the UNHRC, which inherited a permanent agenda item on Israel from the commission, has been as bad if not worse. In the past 12 years, there have been more condemnations of Israel than almost all other countries combined.
NGOs like HRW and Amnesty International have played a leading role in promoting the discrimination and double standards. They have eagerly used Agenda Item 7 to maintain a disproportionate focus on Israel, while all other countries of the world were relegated to Item 4. On a typical Item 7 debate, more than 75 anti-Israel NGOs sign up to speak. In contrast, debates on Ukraine, for instance, barely garner 10 presenters.
NGOs have also played a significant role in shaping UNHRC commissions of inquiry. There have been more COIs targeting Israel than all other countries combined. NGOs were integral in the creation and final report of the Goldstone delegation after the 2009 Gaza conflict. HRW, for instance, recommended Richard Goldstone as a committee member, and Amnesty provided an outline, explicitly ignoring crimes by Hamas, which the mission almost entirely adopted.
NGOs were also particularly active in lobbying for the one-sided UNHRC investigations of Israel regarding the 2010 flotilla, 2014 Gaza war, and, most recently in May for the Gaza border riots. These NGOs are also closely working with the council to produce a blacklist of companies doing business with Israel.
The U.S. move comes at a time of severe crisis at the council. The U.S. is the largest donor to the UNHRC and its bureaucracy, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. These two bodies have been plagued over the past few years by employee strikes and mandatory pay cuts. The crushing load of repetitive and overlapping reports and special procedures has brought the council to near paralysis.
In April of this year, the council began a long series of meetings and activities aimed at restructuring. The U.S. hoped that these reform efforts would not only solve the problem of double standards against Israel, but would also make the body more focused and efficient. Unfortunately, too many member states were wedded to the status quo — dictatorships like Russia and China that want to maintain control, the Arab League and the Organization for Islamic Cooperation that enjoy the obsession with Israel, and most of the European countries that are either unwilling or unable to push for real change.
HRW and other NGOs sided with the regressive forces and actively lobbied the Europeans to block reform efforts. This is not surprising, given that these groups enjoy a privileged place at the council. They are invited to closed meetings with UN officials, help drive the agendas, and shape the direction of reporting.
For the NGOs, though, their advocacy had significant consequences. Nikki Haley excoriated HRW in a June 20 letter, “You should know that your efforts to block negotiations and thwart reform were a contributing factor in the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Council.” She also advised, “going forward, we encourage you to play a constructive role on behalf of human rights, rather than the deconstructive one you played in this instance.”
Had HRW and Amnesty used their stature to promote universal human rights, due process, and equal treatment for all countries, the UNHRC would not have reached this crisis point. But because they are beholden to political ideologies and harmful agendas, they have damaged the very institution they so eagerly champion.
If HRW, Amnesty, and other NGOs are upset about the U.S. leaving the council, they only have themselves to blame.
The author is the Legal Advisor of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute.
