President Biden’s obsession with quickly reversing his predecessor’s policies leads him to do something he constantly accused his predecessor of doing: giving legitimacy to murderous dictators.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced this week that Washington will “engage immediately and vigorously” at the UN Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, from which former President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018. American representatives will seek full membership in the council elections in October.
The New York Times calls the UNHRC “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 human rights violators and they use their position to enlighten their citizens and the world about their crimes – and even gain opportunities to condemn Western democracies as the real abusers.
Why would America want to work with an organization ostensibly dedicated to improving human rights, but dominated by countries like China, Russia, Cuba and Venezuela?
Blinken agrees that the body “is flawed and in need of reform”, but says that dealing with its “shortcomings” requires America 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 who fight injustice and tyranny” – that is, “when it works well”.
But when you have ever worked well?
Trump’s withdrawal was not an unprecedented change in policy by an president. When the council was created in 2006 to replace the UN Human Rights Commission, President George W. Bush refused to enter and was prescient: the new body ended up replicating the same problems that led to the dismantling of the old one, which was a “Abuser club”, as NPR said.
President Barack Obama, however, decided to “reengage” because it is “vital” “to have a seat at the table,” said John Kerry, his secretary of state. Sound familiar? But there is no evidence of reform during Obama’s years.
Consider the UNHRC’s obsession with condemning Israel, even if it ignores deadly dictatorships. In fact, the body’s only permanent item on the agenda is Israel, and it passed more resolutions condemning the Jewish state than for the rest of the combined world. It also created eight commissions of inquiry in Israel – and only one in North Korea.
The then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, declared at the opening session of the 2011 council that her “structural bias against Israel” is “wrong” and “undermines” her work. But if the board ignored similar complaints from two UN secretary generals, Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon, and from its own president, Doru Costea – and ignored it – why would he switch to Clinton?
Later that year, Richard Falk, the council’s special rapporteur on “Occupied Palestinian Territories”, posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on his blog. The United States, calling it “shameful and outrageous”, demanded Falk’s resignation. He served his six-year term, which ended in 2014.
There is simply no reform of a body that gives criminals equal conditions with free nations. The UN resolution establishing the council states that members “must maintain the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights” – even though more than half are not even democracies, obtaining Freedom House ratings of “not free” or “partially free”.
While the United States sat at his table, Faisal bin Hassan Trad of Saudi Arabia was elected chairman of the council’s advisory committee. That was in 2015, the same year that Venezuelan fort Nicolás Maduro, greeted with a standing ovation, delivered a 40-minute speech full of lies, with no answers allowed.
When, in 2019, 22 countries signed a letter to the council demanding that China close its Xinjiang concentration camps, where at least one million Uighurs were interned, 50 countries responded by praising the “remarkable achievements of the Beijing regime in Xinjiang “.
Hitting each other on the back between tyrants may not be the most tragicomic council activity. Last month, North Korea – ruled for decades by a totalitarian dynasty – was given the floor to say to Australia “to stop cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in public places of detention” and “to ensure” that people with disabilities can participate “of the elections in an equality with the others.”
Why give America’s imprimatur to a body that scoffs at freedom? It is as ridiculous as Biden’s reversal of Trump’s terrorist designation of Iran’s Yemen-backed Houthi rebels days before asking them. . . stop your terrorism. An anti-Trump-centered foreign policy is not a real policy.
Twitter: @KJTorrance