US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley termed the Human Rights Council as the United Nations’ “greatest failure”and defended the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the council. She also alleged that the council had given cover to the the world’s most inhumane regimes.
While speaking to a top American think-tank – The Heritage Foundation, Haley said, “More often, the Human Rights Council has provided cover, not condemnation, for the world’s most inhumane regimes. It has been a bully pulpit for human rights violators.”
She stated that the body has been, not a place of conscience, but a place of politics and has focused its attention unfairly and relentlessly on Israel, all the while ignoring the misery inflicted by regimes in China, Venezuela, Cuba, and Zimbabwe.
“Judged by how far it has fallen short of its promise, the Human Rights Council is the United Nations’ greatest failure,” she said.
“It has taken the idea of human dignity – the idea that is at the center of our national creed and the birthright of every human being – and it has reduced it to just another instrument of international politics. And that is a great tragedy,” Haley said, adding that she had not come to this conclusion happily, or lightly.
“Many of our friends urged us to stay for the sake of the institution. The United States, they said, provided the last shred of credibility the Council had. But that was precisely why we withdrew,” she said.
The UN ambassador also said that the right to speak freely, to associate and worship freely; to determine ones own future; to be equal before the law were sacred rights.
“We take these rights seriously – too seriously to allow them to be cheapened by an institution – especially one that calls itself the Human Rights Council,” she said.
Ms Haley stated to this day, the US does more for human rights, both inside the UN and around the world, than any other country and that the US would continue to do that.
“No one should make the mistake of equating membership in the Human Rights Council with the support for human rights,” she said. “We just won’t do it inside a Council that consistently fails the cause of human rights.”
However, she said that America’s withdrawal from the Human Rights Council does not mean that it has given up its fight for reform.
“On the contrary, any country willing to work with us to reshape the Council need only ask. Fixing the institutional flaws of the Human Rights Council was, is, and will remain one of the biggest priorities at the UN,” she added.
Earlier, The United States decided to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council as the country thinks that the council has become a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias.
US also believes that there is an entrenched bias against Israel in the council.
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has sought major changes on the council throughout her tenure, issued a blistering critique of the panel, saying it had grown more callous over the past year and become a “protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias.” She cited the admission of Congo as a member even as mass graves were being discovered there, and the failure to address human rights abuses in Venezuela and Iran.
“I want to make it crystal clear that this step is not a retreat from our human rights commitments,” she said during a joint appearance with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the department. “On the contrary. We take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.”
Haley accused governments with woeful human rights records of seeking a seat on the council to avoid scrutiny and then resisting proposals for reform.