Right Time for US to Withdraw from UN Human Rights Council

Rasa - After voiding so many international agreements and treaties, it’s not really surprising that the United States is now withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The reason: “The body is too often critical of Israel’s human rights record”!

News ID: 438353

Date: 21 June 2018 - 23:07

RNA - In other words, once again Israel is behind the US decision to withdraw from an international body, because the UN has just started investigating a new round of killings in the occupied Palestinian territories – even though the US has been talking up this move for awhile.

This also came after the UNHRC criticized the US over its treatment of undocumented migrants at the border. That’s probably not the direct reason for the US withdrawal, given how long they have threatened to do so. Distancing the US from UN bodies over Israel, however, is a long-standing policy across several administrations, and was likely just a matter of timing.

The truth is, the United States is the world's biggest violator of human rights of non-American persons and has been strongly condemned for conducting surveillance and prisoner torture around the globe. According to numerous UN reports on US human rights, a large number of overseas surveillance projects conducted by the US continue to violate other countries' sovereignty and the civil rights of their people.

Frequent drone strikes by the US have equally caused a large amount of non-American civilian casualties, as the US continues to carry out drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, killing civilians on the pretext of fighting terror and occupying lands on the pretext of introducing democracy.

Further still, the US tortures prisoners in other countries and regions. Guantanamo Bay detainees' human rights are still being severely damaged with many of them held there indefinitely without trial. The US government authorizes the Central Intelligence Agency to operate a secret detention program which involves the establishment of clandestine detention facilities on the territory of other states. Individuals were and are still reportedly extraordinarily rendered or secretly detained by the CIA. Despite wide criticism against the CIA's illegal action, no American official has so far been brought to justice.

International criticism of Washington on issues ranging from violence inflicted on minorities to US immigration policies and support for Saudi-led war on Yemen and Israeli atrocities in occupied Palestine is another point worth mentioning. US-backed Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen have caused thousands of civilian deaths. US-backed Saudi-led blockade has equally worsened the humanitarian situation on the ground for millions of innocent civilians in the war-torn country.

The self-proclaimed human rights defender has exposed its human rights ‘myth’ with its own deeds and since it cannot defend itself anymore, it just wants to bail out. The United States has long trampled on human rights in other countries and willfully slaughtered innocent victims. This makes it impossible for its ambassador at the UN, Nikki Haley, to defend US actions in any way, much less explain the racist comments of its president.

President Donald Trump’s comments about migrants, Mexicans and Muslims are harmful and fuel xenophobic abuses. His immigration policies have led to breaches of international law. Trump’s derogatory politics on Muslims and Mexican immigrants might have won enthusiastic backing from prominent white supremacists who embrace anti-black and anti-Muslim ideologies. But it has equally drawn international condemnation and criticism.

These echo the arguments that the US is better off abandoning the UN Human Rights Council altogether. Today, most of the world - including the UNHRC - recoils in horror at the US government’s wars and atrocities across the globe and its treatment of migrant children, Muslims and people of color at home.

The truth is, this is the right time for the chronic violator of human rights to step away from its seat at the UN Human Rights Council, where the US has always done everything it could to silence the nations it oppressed or helped to oppress – instead of giving them the voice.

Under the Trump administration, the US will never perform the role that the world needs it to - to push forward a clear view of universal values in the Council’s resolutions, including but not limited to ending its support for regime-change wars in Muslim heartlands and weaponizing Saudi-Israeli atrocities in occupied Yemen and Palestine.

847/940