United States withdraws from UN rights council

TIL Desk/World/Washington/ The United States withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council in protest of what it perceives as an entrenched bias against Israel and a willingness to allow notorious human rights abusers as members. US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has announced that the United States is withdrawing from the UNHRC, alleging the 47-member council of “political bias.”

“For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias. Human rights abusers continue to serve on, and be elected to, the council,” Haley said. “The world’s most inhumane regimes continue to escape its scrutiny, and the council continues politicising scapegoating of countries with positive human rights records in an attempt to distract from the abusers in its ranks,” she added.

The announcement came barely a day after the UNHRC condemned the Trump administration for its policy of separating children from the families at the US-Mexico border. Haley threw a couple of other adjectives at the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, calling it “hypocritical” and “self-serving” organization.