GHA Peace
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David
Begin forwarded message:
From: David Townsend <davidmtownsendjd@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 19, 2018 at 5:40:15 PM EDT
To: David Townsend <davidmtownsendjd@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: U.S. Quits UN Human Rights Council, Saying It’s Anti-Israel, by Nick
Wadhams, 19 June 2018
...
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Re: United Nations
Human Rights Council
United States of America
Article by Nick Wadhams, 19 June 2018, updated 5:10 pm EDT.
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Best regards and health to you and others,
David Townsend
https://www-bloomberg-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-06-19/trump-is-said-ready-to-pull-u-s-from-un-s-human-rights-council?amp_js_v=0.1&usqp=mq331AQGCAEoATgB#origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&prerenderSize=1&visibilityState=prerender&paddingTop=54&p2r=0&horizontalScrolling=0&csi=1&aoh=15294435827803&viewerUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Famp%2Fs%2Fwww.bloomberg.com%2Famp%2Fnews%2Farticles%2F2018-06-19%2Ftrump-is-said-ready-to-pull-u-s-from-un-s-human-rights-council&history=1&storage=1&cid=1&cap=swipe%2CnavigateTo%2Ccid%2Cfragment%2CreplaceUrl
U.S. Quits UN Human Rights Council, Saying It’s Anti-Israel
June 19, 2018, 12:00 PM EDT
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The Trump administration withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights
Council on Tuesday, making good on a pledge to leave a body it accused of
hypocrisy and criticized as biased against Israel.
“For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights
abusers, and a cesspool of political bias,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador
to the UN, said Tuesday at the State Department in Washington. She said the
decision was an affirmation of U.S. respect for human rights, a commitment
that “does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving
organization that makes a mockery of human rights.”
The 47-member council, created in 2006 and based in Geneva, began its latest
session on Monday with a broadside against President Donald Trump’s
immigration policy by the UN’s high commissioner for human rights. He called
the policy of separating children from parents crossing the southern border
illegally “unconscionable.”
Tracking Trump: Follow the Administration’s Every Move
The Trump administration is under intense criticism from business groups,
human rights organizations and lawmakers from both parties over the recently
imposed policy.
In the Works
While that timing was jarring, the U.S. withdrawal had been in the works for
some time. National Security Adviser John Bolton had also opposed the body’s
creation when he was U.S. ambassador to the UN in 2006. Current Ambassador
Haley warned a year ago that the U.S. would pull out if the council didn’t
address what she saw as its bias toward Israel and the fact that many of its
current members -- they include China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt -- have poor
human rights records themselves.
Condemning the planned withdrawal from the UN group, Senator Chris Coons, a
Democrat who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the decision
“sends a clear message that the Trump administration does not intend to lead
the world when it comes to human rights.”
The council also has been a forum for criticism of Trump’s economic
policies. In a report on the U.S. due to be submitted to the Human Rights
Council this week, Philip Alston, the UN’s rapporteur on poverty, said the
president’s tax overhaul “overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and worsened
inequality.”
The report says that while the U.S. has long been the most unequal among
developed nations, it’s getting worse under Trump. “The policies pursued
over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections
from the poorest,” it said.
Calls to Revamp
Even some critics of the human rights council have called for continuing to
push for a revamping of the body rather than quitting it.
On the opening day of the council’s current session, British Foreign
Secretary Boris Johnson criticized the body’s perennial agenda item
dedicated to Israel and the Palestinian territories, calling it “damaging to
the cause of peace.” Nonetheless, he said the U.K. wasn’t “blind to the
value of this council.”
The council is scheduled to discuss Israel and the Palestinian territories
on July 2, according to its agenda.
“The Trump administration’s withdrawal is a sad reflection of its
one-dimensional human rights policy -- defending Israeli abuses from
criticism takes precedence above all else,” Human Rights Watch Executive
Director Kenneth Roth said in a statement. “Other governments will have to
redouble their efforts to ensure the council addresses the world’s most
serious human rights problems.”
— With assistance by Margaret Talev
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