The announcement comes as the Trump administration faces mounting pressure over its family separation policy.
Screenshot/Fox News
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced on Tuesday that the U. S. will withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council, citing anti-Israel bias and hypocrisy among the members of the international body.
During a briefing at the State Department Tuesday afternoon, they argued that the council has failed beyond repair in its efforts to prevent human rights abuses, and that the 47-member body is marred by a biased campaign against Israel, a key U. S. ally.
“President Trump wants to move the ball forward. From day one, he has called out institutions and countries that say one thing and do another, and that is precisely the problem at the Human Rights Council,” Pompeo told reporters. “As President Trump said at the UN General Assembly, it is a massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations that some governments with egregious human rights records sit on the Human Rights Council.”
“We have no doubt that there was once a noble vision for this council, but today we need to be honest. The Human Rights Council is a poor defender of human rights,” he continued. “Worse than that, the Human Rights Council has become an exercise in shameless hypocrisy, with many of the world’s worst human rights offenses going ignored and some of the world’s most serious offenders sitting on the council itself.”
Haley, who has long been an outspoken critic of the council, spoke about reforms she presented to the organization last year and her disappointment in their lack of action on those priorities.
“These reforms were needed to make the council a serious advocate for human rights. For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias,” she said. “Therefore, as we said we would do a year ago if we did not see any progress, the United States is officially withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council.”
Haley also emphasized that the removal of the U. S. from the council should not signify a lack of interest in promoting human rights. Instead, she said the opposite was true.
“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,” she said.
The U. S. blocked a statement from the council in May calling for an investigation into the violence on the Gaza strip, where Israeli soldiers reportedly killed 58 Palestinians.
The announcement comes after Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, criticized the Trump administration’s practice of separating families caught trying to cross the southern border illegally, a policy he called “unconscionable.”
Aaron Credeur is a News Fellow at IJR. He has written on a variety of national topics, including the 2016 presidential election, the state of liberal… more
