Washington: US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has announced that the United States is withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council, 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,” CNN reported quoting Haley, as saying from the State Department, where she was accompanied by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“The world’s most inhumane regimes continue to escape its scrutiny, and the council continues politicizing 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.
“I want to make it crystal clear that this step is not a retreat from our human rights commitments. On the contrary, we take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organisation that makes a mockery of human rights,” she said.
The Trump administration has already pulled the US out of several enormous international organisations and deals, including the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal, as well as the UN’s educational and cultural organizations. (ANI)