In another colossal foreign policy blunder, the Biden administration announced Monday that it is reengaging unconditionally with the United Nations’ misnamed Human Rights Council, which makes excuses for some of the worst human rights abusing countries in the world. This move follows the Biden administration’s decisions to reengage with the China-centric World Health Organization and to rejoin the job-killing Paris Agreement on climate change. To quote Forest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted, “The @UN Human Rights Council is flawed and needs reform, but walking away won’t fix it. The best way to improve the Council, so it can achieve its potential, is through robust and principled U.S. leadership. Under @POTUS Biden, we are reengaging and ready to lead.”
There is no accountability and no true dedication to universal human rights at the Human Rights Council as currently constituted
Note that Blinken’s announcement did not include a single demand for any specific concrete reforms. Neither did the statement expanding on this absurd decision issued by the U.S. Mission to the UN. That statement expressed the naïve belief that the Human Rights Council “can help promote fundamental freedoms around the world.”
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres not surprisingly welcomed the Biden administration’s decision. His spokesperson issued a statement describing the Human Rights Council as “the world’s leading forum for addressing the full range of human rights challenges.” It added that the “Council’s mechanisms and special procedures are vital tools for ensuring action and accountability.”
The Human Rights Council is nothing of the sort. Serial human rights abusing countries China, Cuba, Pakistan, and Russia were elected to three-year terms on the Human Rights Council, beginning in 2021. These four are joining such other models of human rights abuse as Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Venezuela. China’s election to a seat on the Human Rights Council is especially egregious, considering the regime’s crimes against humanity in its mass detention, torture, and other horrible mistreatment of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region of northwest China. There is no accountability and no true dedication to universal human rights at the Human Rights Council as currently constituted.
The Obama-Biden administration tried reengaging with the UN’s dysfunctional human rights body once before. They thought that they could “reform” the Human Rights Council from within. They failed miserably. Nothing changed for the better. The Human Rights Council and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights continued to face no consequences for their blatant hypocrisy and Israel bashing.
The United States never left the community of nations during the Trump administration
The Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Human Rights Council in 2018, after first providing it the opportunity for months to reform its ways to no avail. "When the Human Rights Council treats Israel worse than North Korea, Iran, and Syria, it is the Council itself that is foolish and unworthy of its name,” former U.S. Ambassador to the UN said back then. “It is time for the countries who know better to demand changes."
The Biden administration has demanded no changes. It is reversing the Trump administration’s sensible decisions regarding the Human Rights Council and other UN-related bodies in the name of multilateralism. Too often we hear the fallacious argument that to support the principle of multilateralism one must wholeheartedly support the United Nations in all that it does.
The United States never left the community of nations during the Trump administration. It did not forsake multilateralism in the sense of cooperating with other countries on common problems that transcend national boundaries to achieve a feasible stated goal without sacrificing national sovereignty. But intelligent multilateralism does not mean acquiescence to whatever other countries or the UN bureaucracy think must be done, no matter what the cost. That includes human rights. Just slapping the label “human rights” on a UN forum is not enough. It must walk the walk, so to speak. With human rights-abusing countries like China using the Human Rights Council to squelch criticism of its own record and of its autocratic allies, the UN Human Rights Council does far more harm than good.
“The cost of the U.S. rejoining is that it lends legitimacy to a council where tyrannies and other non-democracies now comprise 60% of the membership, including serial abusers of human rights like China, Russia, Cuba, and Pakistan, all of whom have escaped any censure in the form of a council resolution, inquiry or urgent session,” said Hillel Neuer of the independent human rights group UN Watch. “In exchange, the U.S. at a minimum must demand serious reform, removing despots from the council such as Venezuela’s Maduro regime, holding dictators to account for their oppression, and ending the notorious agenda item that targets Israel alone in each session.”
The Biden administration is not demanding any serious reforms or an end to the Human Rights Council’s blatant bias against Israel as a condition of its reengagement. Instead, the Biden administration will repeat the mistake of the Obama administration and wimpishly reengage with the Human Rights Council on a wing and a prayer.
In another colossal foreign policy blunder, the Biden administration announced Monday that it is reengaging unconditionally with the United Nations’ misnamed Human Rights Council, which makes excuses for some of the worst human rights abusing countries in the world. This move follows the Biden administration’s decisions to reengage with the China-centric World Health Organization and to rejoin the job-killing Paris Agreement on climate change. To quote Forest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted, “The @UN Human Rights Council is flawed and needs reform, but walking away won’t fix it. The best way to improve the Council, so it can achieve its potential, is through robust and principled U.S. leadership. Under @POTUS Biden, we are reengaging and ready to lead.”
