Trump Says See Ya To The UN Human Rights Council, Announces U.S. Withdrawal
Luke Rohlfing
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The United Nations Human Rights Council doesn’t deserve their namesake with countries like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Cuba having representatives on the council. Now President Donald Trump’s Administration has made it clear that they don’t deserve to have the United States as representatives in a Tuesday decision to withdraw the U.S.’s membership.
The announcement was made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and wasn’t all that surprising. The United States has feuded with the U.N.’s Human Rights Council since the President first took office.
Conflicts between the U.S. and the U.N. Human Rights Council flared up most notably in recent weeks after the 47-member body voted to condemn Israel. The Human Rights Council considers Israel the world’s number one human rights abuser, while continually taking the side of Palestine in the border dispute between the two countries.
While the council’s treatment of Israel was the stated reason for the withdrawal, the U.N. Human Rights Council has long been a thorn in the side of many tenants of Donald Trump’s agenda.
For many years, the U.N. Human Rights Council has fought to make abortion a human right. Many members of the council are also extremely opposed to President Trump’s strict anti-illegal immigration stance. Just a day before the decision to withdraw from membership in the council, the U.N.’s human rights chief blasted Trump for his work to enforce federal immigration law in the United States.
During Monday’s meeting session Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein told the body that “in the United States, I am deeply concerned by recently adopted policies which punish children for their parents’ actions.”
The Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council is yet another accomplishment for anyone who believes in his “America First” message. Perhaps his next step could be leaving the United Nations all together.
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