Unless there are some serious reforms to what has become a “haven for dictators,” top officials in the Trump administration signaled that the U.S. government may consider withdrawing yet again from the increasingly discredited United Nations Human Rights Council. The UN council has become a forum for helping tyrants and mass murderers whitewash their crimes, according to Trump’s envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley (shown). It has also eroded the legitimacy of human rights, Haley argued. On top of that, while unmentioned by the Trump administration, the discredited UN outfit has meddled in U.S. politics and regularly attacks the constitutionally protected liberties of Americans. And finally, U.S. officials blasted the systemic anti-Israel bias of the UN outfit, warning that it had to stop. While Haley did not commit either way, it would not be the first time the U.S. has pulled out of the UN agency.
In her first visit to the UN Human Rights Council, Trump’s UN Ambassador ridiculed the outfit as a “forum for politics, hypocrisy and evasion.” In addition, the UN organ, with most of its member regimes being classified as unfree, allows murderous dictators and savage human rights abusers “to whitewash their images,” Haley was quoted as saying on June 6 in news reports. The UN body also allows Israel’s enemies a forum to unfairly demonize the Jewish state, she said, echoing a common criticism heard in Washington, D.C., Jerusalem and beyond. “If it fails to change, then we must pursue the advancement of human rights outside the council,” Haley warned, suggesting the U.S. government would again withdraw from the UN council if serious reforms were not forthcoming. When pressed, she did not commit to leaving or staying.
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However, in her remarks at the council, Haley strongly suggested that the Trump administration was hoping to remain engaged in the Human Rights Council, despite the UN outfit’s outlandish criticism of Trump and meddling during the 2016 election on behalf of Democrat Hillary Clinton. “America does not seek to leave the Human Rights Council; we seek to re-establish the council’s legitimacy,” she explained, without elaborating on when exactly she believed the widely ridiculed, dictator-controlled UN body ever had any legitimacy. “The United States will not sit quietly while this body, supposedly dedicated to human rights, continues to damage the cause for human rights.”
Brutal dictatorships were evidently not pleased with the relatively mild criticism. The ambassador for the unhinged Socialist regime destroying Venezuela, for example, used the “right of reply” rules to slam Trump and what he called “the pathetic intervention from the ambassador of the North American empire.” “What’s unbelievable is that the United States empire — which has massacred entire nations with its preventable war and whom practices torture against people arbitrarily held within illegal facilities — would declare itself against any nation,” said Jorge Valero, the Venezuelan dictator’s ambassador to the UN body, even as the regime he serves massacres protesters in the streets while the nation’s economy implodes under failed socialist rule. Incredibly, the ACLU sided with Caracas, blasting Trump.
The murderous dictatorship enslaving Venezuela is just one of the many shockingly brutal and totalitarian regimes that currently dominate the 57-member UN council, despite the stipulation that member states of the body “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.” Others include the communist dictatorship in Beijing, responsible for murdering more people than any other government in human history. The mass-murdering communist dictatorship enslaving Cuba is on the council, too. Other communist and socialist regimes include those ruling Bolivia, Vietnam, South Africa, Ecuador, El Salvador, and more. Also holding a seat is the Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia, which beheads “apostates,” bans Christianity, flogs and executes dissidents, and supports radical Islamism around the world. Other Islamist dictatorships also serve on the council.
The June 6 lecture in Geneva was not the first time Haley has spoken out. In a June 2 piece published in the anti-Trump hysteria factory known as the Washington Post, the UN ambassador and former South Carolina governor also slammed the UN “Human Rights” Council as a haven for tyrants and mass murderers to whitewash their crimes. However, despite using some harsh language to expose and ridicule the organization, and despite the piece being portrayed as a stinging rebuke of the council, Haley actually attempted to grant undeserved legitimacy both to the institution and to the UN’s perversion of the concept of “human rights” itself.
Of course, she did point to a handful of the most oppressive dictatorships on the council, including the regimes oppressing Venezuela and Cuba. Blasting the tyranny of strongman Nicolás Maduro, she highlighted “arbitrary detention, torture and blatant violations of freedom of the press and expression,” and added that mothers were digging in trash cans to feed their children there. “And yet, not once has the Human Rights Council seen fit to condemn Venezuela,” she noted. “Cuba’s government strictly controls the media and severely restricts the Cuban people’s access to the Internet,” Haley added, pointing to thousands arbitrarily detained and numerous political prisoners serving long sentences. “Yet Cuba has never been condemned by the council; it, too, is a member.” She did not mention numerous other ruthless dictatorships on the UN outfit.
In her piece for the Post, Haley noted that she would be traveling to Geneva to express her concerns in front of the UN council and outline changes that “must” be made. “Among other things, membership on the council must be determined through competitive voting to keep the worst human rights abusers from obtaining seats,” she said. “The presence of multiple human rights-violating countries on the Human Rights Council has damaged both the reputation of the council and the cause of human rights. When the world’s preeminent human rights body is turned into a haven for dictators, the idea of international cooperation in support of human dignity is discredited.”
The constant demonization of Israel by the UN and the UN “Human Rights” machine has become a bipartisan lighting rod for criticism in Washington, D.C., and beyond. And so, it was not surprising that Haley emphasized that it must stop. “When the council passes more than 70 resolutions against Israel, a country with a strong human rights record, and just seven resolutions against Iran, a country with an abysmal human rights record, you know something is seriously wrong,” she said. “It is the responsibility of the United Nations to reclaim this vision and to restore the legitimacy of universal human rights.”
Activists opposed to the dictators club and its disgraced “human rights” apparatus praised the new harsh tone of the U.S. government. However, little has been said so far by Haley or other senior officials about the broader problems inherent in the UN and its “human rights” organs. Among the most serious is the UN’s perversion of the very concept of “human rights,” undermining the God-given rights of Americans enshrined in the Constitution in favor of government-granted privileges that can be revoked at will under virtually any pretext. Indeed, Article 29 of the UN’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” even states explicitly that none of the rights and privileges granted under the agreement may be used “contrary to the purposes and principles” of the UN.
Another major problem, also left unaddressed by Haley, who has increasingly struck a globalist tone, are the UN body’s growing efforts to undermine U.S. sovereignty and freedoms under the guise of “international law.” After a homosexual jihadist of Afghan origin shot up a nightclub in Florida, for example, the UN “human rights” boss, a Muslim prince from a Middle Eastern dictatorship, claimed “international law” required that the U.S. government impose “robust gun control” on Americans. Indeed, UN human-rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has become an incessant propagandist in the war against American freedoms — including those, such as gun rights and free speech, which are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. Hussein also blatantly interfered in the U.S. election, calling Trump “dangerous” to the world and equating his tactics to ISIS in what some analysts suggested might have been a corrupt tit-for-tat deal with Clinton.
Meanwhile, UN “peacekeeping” troops have been raping thousands of women and children around the world. In one town occupied by barbarians wearing UN outfits in the Ivory Coast, a survey revealed that eight out of 10 underage girls were being raped and sexually exploited by the UN forces. Indeed, the UN’s “peace” missions have been notable primarily for corruption, rape, pedophelia, spreading deadly disease, disarming civilians, and even mass murder. And yet, the UN claims the authority to lecture Americans on how “human rights” so-called “law” allegedly requires Big Government, ObamaCare, gun control, speech restrictions, spanking bans, government control of schools, censorship, and other totalitarian, unconstitutional schemes.
Aside from the discredited UN agency’s attacks on self-government and freedom — and even on the concept of human rights — the idea of “reform” is preposterous, critics say. Indeed, “reforming” the UN’s “human rights” bureaucracy has already been tried — and it failed. When Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi took over the UN Human Rights Commission, it was finally disbanded, only to be reconstituted a decade ago as the Council. Today, though, the UN outfit is just as ridiculous, if not more so — it is still dominated by thugs and dictators, it still attacks real freedoms while legitimizing tyranny, it still obsesses over Israel while ignoring horrors perpetrated by government’s around the world, and it is still wedded to the UN’s perverted vision of “human rights” that is completely incompatible with the unalienable rights endowed to Americans by their Creator.
In short, reform is not an option, and it never was. Defunding is not enough. After the historic decision to ditch the UN’s “climate” regime, the Trump administration should follow the George W. Bush administration and withdraw from the disgraceful UN “Human Rights” bureaucracy completely. After that, the American Sovereignty Restoration Act (HR 193) to restore U.S. self-government and dump the dictators club is sitting in the House Foreign Affairs Committee awaiting action. Trump should take this historic opportunity to really drain the swamp — starting with that disgusting cesspool of terrorists, dictators, mass murderers, globalists, communists, Islamists, and spies occupying prime real estate in the heart of New York City.
Photo of U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, June 6, 2017: Keystone via AP
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.
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