U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at the White House on Feb. 05, 2021.
The Biden Administration will re-engage with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and prepare to return to the organization as an observer, U.S. officials said. This decision would once again reverse another important international policy of the Trump administration.
Previously, the Trump Administration had already announced its withdrawal from the UNHRC in 2018 after arguing that it had been criticized by multiple parties for failing to effectively defend human rights and that countries with poor human rights records, such as Communist China, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela, had been elected to the council.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will announce on Monday that the United States will return to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council as an observer and hopes to be elected as a full member by the end of 2021, a senior State Department official said on Sunday (Feb. 7).
The official said, “We intend to do that because we know the most effective way to reform and improve the Human Rights Council is to engage with it in a principled way.”
The official said the Human Rights Council can be “an important forum for fighting tyranny and injustice around the world,” and that the U.S. presence is intended to “ensure that it can fulfill that potential.”
The Associated Press was the first to report on the plan, saying the news could draw opposition from conservative members of Congress.
The 193-member U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote for new council members this October. Members will serve three-year terms, with no more than two consecutive terms. Candidates will be elected by secret ballot in geographical groups to ensure balanced representation.
Returning to the UN Human Rights Council was Biden’s political vision during his campaign. More than 40 Republican lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, sent a joint letter to Biden on Friday (Feb. 5) asking that the United States not return to the organization.
In the letter, which was delivered to Biden, the lawmakers wrote: “Since its creation in 2006, the Human Rights Council has failed to seriously advance the fundamental purposes of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has instead supported some of the world’s most oppressive regimes,” Newsweek reported.
The letter added: “It would be morally reprehensible for the United States to join a body that systematically protects the world’s worst regions from accountability.”
The Republican lawmakers noted that the UN Human Rights Council “disproportionately targets” Israel while failing to pass any resolutions on alleged human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries between 2006 and 2019.
Newsweek notes that over the past decade, the UNHRC has drafted more than 40 resolutions on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. The Israeli government believes that the UN Human Rights Council presents an anti-Israel bias.
After the Trump administration withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he welcomed the decision.
Netanyahu said in June 2018, “Instead of dealing with regimes that systematically violate human rights, the UN Human Rights Council is obsessively focused on the only true democracy in the Middle East – Israel.”
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