The United States may leave the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) as early as next Monday, June 25, after talks about reforming the organization broke down, according to Reuters.
The news wire service reported Monday:
A U.S. source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the withdrawal appeared to be “imminent” but had no details.
Diplomatic sources said it was not a question of if but of when the United States retreats from the Human Rights Council, which is holding a three-week session through July 6.
…
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, publicly told the Council a year ago that Washington might leave the body unless a “chronic anti-Israel bias” were removed.
The UNHRC has become notorious for attacking Israel over false claims of human rights abuses, while ignoring real human rights abuses by its own member states, many of which are tyrannies.
From 2006 to 2016, for example, according to Human Rights Voices, the UNHRC enacted 80 resolutions and decisions about Israel. By comparison, it enacted 28 with regard to Syria, a distant second, and only six on Iran.
The UNHRC was formed in 2006 to replace the UN Human Rights Commission, which had discredited itself as a club for dictators. The George W. Bush administration declined to join the new organization, owing to its evident bias against Israel, but President Barack Obama joined it and sought re-election to the UNHRC before the end of his second term, effectively binding his successor to participate in it.
However, the Trump administration put the UNHRC on notice. Then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson questioned U.S. involvement in the UNHRC, and Ambassador Haley has been particularly scathing in her criticism of it, calling it “corrupt” last year.
In recent days, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid bin Ra’ad condemned the Trump administration’s policy of enforcing immigration law at the U.S.-Mexico border as “unconscionable.”
Ra’ad is a hereditary prince from Jordan, a country the U.S. State Department has described as rife with human rights abuses. Last year, the State Department notes, there were “reports the [Jordanian] government deported some Syrian and Palestinian refugees to Syria without adjudication of whether they had a well-founded fear of persecution there.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.