Does U.S. withdrawal from UN Human Rights Council matter?

On June 19, 2018, the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, announced that the United States was withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). The news, of course, rocked the Council and the wider UN and its implications for the international human rights system. The protection of human rights is one of the UN’s key objectives and a formal element in all its activities. But, since 2006, UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has been particularly entrusted with this task. Composed of officials from 47 UN member states, the UNHRC is elected on a secret ballot by simple majority of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Thirteen seats are set aside for African states, thirteen for Asian, eight for Latin American and Caribbean countries, six for Eastern Europe, and seven for Western Europe and the rest. Any member state of the UN, irrespective of its own human rights record, is eligible to stand. The UN requires states, when casting their vote, to take the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights into account, and the vast majority of those seeking election make written pledges and commitments to this effect. The UNHRC considers the human rights records of all the UN’s 193 member states every four and a half years (‘Universal Periodic Review’). Nikki Haley stated that the United States called for reform of the HRC a year ago and “made a good-faith effort to resolve the problems” they saw within the Council, but that progress had not been made since then. In her statement, Haley noted that U.S. complaints include the election of states that are human rights abusers to the Council, the failure to respond to human rights abuses by states on the Council, and the Council’s bias against Israel. However, Washington’s decision came just days after the Office of the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the Trump administration’s policy of separating the families of immigrants accused of illegal entry. The timing appeared to reflect a petty reaction to criticism. The Human Rights Council had earlier excoriated “the use of immigration detention and family separation is a deterrent to human rights standards and principles”. From a human rights perspective, the child’s best interest should always come first, including over migration management objectives or other administrative concerns. In other words, the child’s best interests are well catered for when they’re in union their families. The Council further said “the US should immediately halt this practice of separating families and stop criminalizing what should at most be an administrative offense—that of irregular entry or stay in the US”. The US was appealed to adopt non-custodial alternatives that allow children to remain with their families and fulfill the best interests of the child, their right to liberty and their right to family life. At some point, in President Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly, he noted that it is a massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations that some governments with egregious human rights records sit on the Human Rights Council. But, does the US withdrawal matter? As a matter of reality, the US membership matters and it equally requires it to observe human rights. There are credible arguments and debates over how the United States, for now the world’s most powerful nation, should protect human rights. The best answer is that the United States should address the glaring gaps in respect for human rights in two ways: by living up to its own principles at home, and by using its considerable leverage to cajole other governments to abide by the universal norms they all adopted. The U.N. Human Rights Council is a good example of how these dynamics play out amid the realities of the post-Cold War international liberal order. Born of a recognition that the U.N. needed to move beyond the East-West divide that had hampered effective progress on human rights, states agreed in 2006 both to widen and deepen the agenda for cooperation. The council should continue to examine critical country-specific situations while establishing a new process for scrutinizing the human rights records of every state, including the United States. While U.S. officials made a defensible policy change regarding a toothless, pretentious, and hypocritical UN agency, the Council lacks enforcement mechanisms, whereby it has to rely on the cooperation of member states. All countries have a moral obligation to protect and promote the God-given dignity and freedom of every human being. Every individual has rights that are inherent and inviolable. The writer is a law expert.

Opinions

Does U.S. withdrawal from UN Human Rights Council matter?