The Trump administration is withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council, U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley said Tuesday, describing the body as one that is “not worthy of its name.”
“Human rights abusers continue to serve on and be elected to the council,” she said, later citing Venezuela, Cuba, and China as examples. “And the council continues politicizing and scapegoating countries with positive human rights records, in an attempt to distract from the abusers.”
Haley said that the administration has tried to resolve the council’s systemic issues over the last year, to no avail. Last June, she suggested that the U.S. would leave the 47-member body unless it made major reforms. Haley said Tuesday that the council did not heed those calls for reform, and that the U.S. would be officially be withdrawing.
“If the Human Rights Council is going to attack countries that uphold human rights and shield countries that abuse human rights, then America should not provide it with any credibility,” she said.
Haley said that authoritarian states seek membership on the council “to protect themselves from scrutiny.” She cited difficulties in responding to human rights abuses—because those responsible are council members.
“When a so-called Human Rights Council cannot bring itself to address the massive abuses in Venezuela and Iran, and it welcomes the Democratic Republic of Congo as a new member, the council ceases to be worthy of its name,” she said.
Haley said that the administration would continue advocating for Human Rights Council reform, and stressed that the withdrawal “is not a retreat from our human rights commitments.” She earlier noted that Russia, China, Cuba, and Egypt all “attempted to undermine” Trump administration council reform efforts.
The U.N. ambassador has been deeply critical of the council’s “chronic anti-Israel bias.” Last June, she demanded that the body remove a permanent agenda item that singles out Israel. “No other country-specific human rights situation is singled out in this manner,” notes a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report.
“Earlier this year, as it has in previous years, the Human Rights Council passed five resolutions against Israel—more than the number passed against North Korea, Iran, and Syria combined,” Haley said Tuesday. “This disproportionate focus and unending hostility towards Israel is clear proof that the council is motivated by political bias.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who spoke before Haley on Tuesday, said the council is a “poor defender of human rights.”
“Worse than that, the Human Rights Council has become an exercise in shameless hypocrisy, with many of the world’s worst human rights abuses going ignored, and some of the world’s most serious offenders sitting on the council itself,” he said.
Pompeo reiterated long-standing criticism of the council, including that it counts authoritarian states as its members, does not have a fair election process for membership, and has exhibited bias against Israel.
“The only thing worse than a council that does almost nothing to protect human rights is a council that covers for human rights abuses, and is therefore an obstacle to progress,” Pompeo added. “The Human Rights Council enables abuses by absolving wrongdoers through silence, and falsely condemning those who have committed no offense.”
Tuesday’s announcement comes amid U.N. criticism aimed at the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents, who have illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. “The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,” U.N. human rights commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said Monday.
When the Human Rights Council was established in 2006, the Bush administration elected not to join. Then-U.N. ambassador John Bolton said at the time, “Our leverage in terms of the performance of the new council is greater by the U.S. not running and sending the signal, ‘this is not business as usual.’” Bolton railed against the Obama administration’s 2009 decision to seek membership. “This is like getting on board the Titanic after it’s hit the iceberg,” he told the Washington Post.
Supporters say that as a UNHRC member, the U.S. could work from within the body to make it more effective and “steer the council toward a more balanced approach,” according to a CRS report. Opponents say that U.S. membership gives a biased body legitimacy and note that the organization has human rights abusers as members.
