President Biden’s obsession with quickly reversing his predecessor’s policies causes him to do something he was constantly accused of doing to his predecessor: give legitimacy to murderous dictators.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced this week that Washington “will recover immediately and strongly” with the UN Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, of which former President Donald Trump is withdrew in 2018. U.S. representatives will seek full membership in council elections in October.
The New York Times calls UNHCR “the most important human rights body in the world,” but “the most corrupt human rights body in the world” would be more appropriate. Its 47 members include flagrant human rights violators and use their position to shed light on their citizens and the world on their misdeeds, and even have the opportunity to condemn Western democracies as genuine abusers.
Why would the United States want to work with an organization seemingly dedicated to improving human rights, but dominated by people like China, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela?
Blinken agrees that the body “is flawed and needs reform,” but says that to address its “shortcomings” America needs to “be at the table, using all the weight of our diplomatic leadership.” He says the council “can serve as an important forum for those fighting injustice and tyranny,” that is, “when it works well.”
But when you have it always has it worked well?
Trump’s withdrawal was not a step upside down by the rule of an unprecedented president. When the council was created in 2006 to replace the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, President George W. Bush refused to join and was precarious: the new body ended up replicating the same problems that had led to the dismantling of the ‘old, a club of abusers,’ as NPR used to say.
However, President Barack Obama decided to “re-engage,” because it is “vital” “to have a seat at the table,” said John Kerry, his secretary of state. Does it sound familiar to you? But there is no evidence of reform during the Obama years.
Let’s take UNHCR’s obsession with condemning Israel, even though it ignores deadly dictatorships. In fact, the only permanent item on the body’s agenda is Israel, and it has passed more resolutions censoring the Jewish state than the rest of the world as a whole. He has also created eight commissions of inquiry into Israel and only one into North Korea.
Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated at the council’s 2011 opening session that her “structural bias against Israel” is “wrong” and “undermines” her work. But if the council ignored similar complaints from two UN secretaries-general, Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon, and its own president, Doru Costea – and did – why would it change to Clinton?
Later that year, Richard Falk, the council’s special rapporteur on “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” posted an anti-Semitic drawing on his blog. The United States, calling him “shameful and outrageous,” demanded that Falk resign. He served his six-year term, which ended in 2014.
There is simply no reform of a body that gives the wicked an equal footing with free nations. The UN resolution establishing the council states that members “will maintain the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights,” even though more than half are not even democracies, gaining ratings of Freedom House of “not free” or “partially free.”
While the United States had a seat at its table, Faisal bin Hassan Trad, of Saudi Arabia, was elected chairman of the council’s advisory committee. It was in 2015, the same year, the strong Venezuelan man Nicolás Maduro, received with a standing ovation, delivered a 40-minute speech full of lies, with answers not allowed.
When, in 2019, 22 countries signed a letter to the council asking China to close its Xinjiang concentration camps, where at least one million Uyghurs have been interned, 50 countries responded by complimenting the “remarkable achievements of the regime from Beijing to Xinjiang ”.
Mutual overlap between tyrants could not be even the most tragicomic activity of the council. Last month, North Korea, ruled for decades by a totalitarian dynasty, was given the floor to tell Australia “to stop being treated cruelly, inhumanly or degradingly in public places of detention” and “ensure” that people with disabilities may participate “in elections on an equal basis with others”.
Why give the American primer to a body that mocks freedom? It’s as ridiculous as Biden’s reversal of Trump’s terrorist designation of Youthi-backed Houthi rebels days before he asked for it. . . stop their terrorism. A Trump-centered foreign policy is no real policy.
Twitter: @KJTorrance