Is President Trump’s human rights hiatus legitimate or based on myths? (op-ed)

President George W. Bush’s first administration boycotted the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.  Bush’s advisors believed the Commission was ineffective, bias, obsessed with Israel, and tolerant of too many blatant human rights offenders. 

          

In 2006 the United Nations General Assembly scrapped the Commission on Human Rights and replaced it with the current United Nations Human Rights Council.  While the General Assembly drafted rules for the newly formed UNHRC the Bush Administration demanded that the General Assembly create standards for UNHRC membership.  The General Assembly rejected the notion of “American approval” of UNHRC members, and the Bush Administration declined to make the United States a member of the UNHRC.

In 2009, President Barack Obama reversed the Bush Administration’s decision and the United States joined the UNHRC with the intentions of taking a leading role.   But last month, in 2018, the Trump Administration announced the United States was pulling out of the UNHRC.
            

Nikki Haley, United States ambassador to the United Nations, stated the United States gave the UNHRC “opportunity after opportunity” to make changes.  She also chastised the UNHRC for having human rights violators like China, Cuba, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as members. (Critics said Haley’s list was loaded with left-wing regimes that are hostile to the United States and her list excluded autocratic U.S. allies also known for human rights abuses.)  Two weeks before the announcement Haley publicly complained about the Council’s “relentless, pathological campaign” against Israel.  Haley pointed out the UNHRC adopted five resolutions condemning Israel and only one resolution, each, against North Korea, Iran and Syria, and since the Council’s creation it has passed over 70 resolutions targeting Israel and just seven on Iran.  Haley also stated, the United States took this step because our commitment to human rights does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of its official charge. 

       

Haley’s comments echoed her Republican predecessors before their party’s hiatus from the oval office, but, in 2016, right before the Republican return to the presidency, Ted Piccone, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on the status of the UNHRC ten years after its founding.

           

Piccone’s testimony covered several myths about the United Nations Human Rights Council.  These are the myths that contradict the Trump Administration’s official reasons for withdrawing from the UNHRC. 

1).  Regarding the UNHRC’s membership, some members do not represent “the shining stars” of the human rights universe, but from 2007 - 2015, over 74 percent of the UNHRC’s members met the freedom house standards for free and partly free countries, so it’s not the case that the majority of the UNHRC’s members are authoritarian. (Freedom House is a non-governmental organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom and democracy across the world.  It was founded in 1941.)  And states with the most notorious human rights records either failed in their campaigns to win a seat or withdrawn after facing heavy opposition.

2).  Regarding the UNHRC’s bias treatment of Israel, it’s a known fact Israel’s human rights record in the occupied Palestinian territories is the only country-specific, permanent item, on the UNHRC’s agenda, but that was a result of bad bargaining in the early years of the UNHRC when the United States refused to participate.  Since the United States joined the body only two such sessions have been called; a similar decrease in the number of country resolutions devoted to Israel occurred, along with a corresponding increase in attention to dire cases like Iran, North Korea, and Syria.

3).  Regarding the leadership of the United States at the UNHRC, some argue that the UNHRC is politically poisoned and the United States is morally obligated to withdraw.  But this approach would abandon the field to those who remain determined to block any international scrutiny or condemnation of human rights violations around the world. The evidence against U.S. withdrawal is already available - its absence from the Council’s table during the first two years of its existence led to setbacks on multiple fronts, including the preponderant focus on Israel.

First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 7/4/18