Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/19/u-s-withdraws-from-u-n-human.html
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Let me guess, this is 100% about Israel, right?
checks BBC News
Yep! Darn that Human Rights Council for criticizing murder.
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Before anyone complains about “the UN” putting Saudi Arabia or whoever on the Human Rights Council, remember that members of the Council are elected by the General Assembly. Countries hostile to human rights (including the US) can and do vote for like-minded countries to ensure that the Council protects abusers. They can’t abolish it but they can make it ineffectual and bring it into disrepute.
(Edited to avoid the unintended impression that I was supporting the Administration.)
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Ain’t that about a bitch?
Can we start a petition to remove that erroneous plaque from the statue of liberty, already?
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I was going to jump on the bandwagon, but despite the phenomenally poor timing, Nikki Haley is actually right.
I mean, first, have a look at the current members.
We’ve got some nice friendly folks like Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Quatar, China, Saudi Arabia and Philippines.
The UNHRC is deeply flawed, and yes the US leaving right now is a superb case of pot calling the kettle black, but it doesn’t mean the kettle isn’t black.
The Human Rights Council nowadays is a much about Human Rights as any country calling itself “Democratic” actually is.
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It’s not the words, it’s the stark hypocrisy of it coming out of her mouth for the Trump administration. They didn’t withdraw us because of Saudi Arabia’s poor human rights record. They withdrew us because other members opposed Isreal’s poor human rights record.
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“In doing so, I want to make it crystal clear that this step is not a retreat from our human rights commitments,” Haley said.
I want to make it crystal clear that we are holding you to that. Now, have you met the child internment camps that your administration is filling up?
Do something about that, would you? Post haste, if you please.
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That’s probably true, but what a time to defend the Administration.
There are children in cages in the desert.
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I know, but I’ve been in comment threads about the Human Rights Council (on other sites) where people talk about the hypocrisy of the UN as an institution as if the Secretary General gets to decide which countries get to sit on the Council.
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I did not intend to defend the Trump Administration, which wants the Human Rights Council to protect human rights abusers as long as they are the right abusers.
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Treating “The UN” as a shadowy hive mind is obviously not starting the argument off on the right foot; but hasn’t “what if a lot of the constituents are really terrible people?” been a standard concern about representative entities in general; and the fact that the UN’s constituents are the leaders of the world’s nation states been a strong reason for suspicion that a lot of their constituents in particular are really terrible people essentially since the beginning of representative government and the UN, respectively?
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Officially, yes. Unofficially, this move is a long-term investment for the regime.
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I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a diverse set of countries on there. There are 47 members and they aren’t all authoritarian. The UN is a worldwide organization and even N. Korea is represented in the general council. The entire idea of the UN is to get all the countries of the world engaged with each other, regardless of the differences.
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And whenever I think it couldn´t get worse…
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@jlargentaye listed the 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council; not just the UN.
It’s true that the UN is about international engagement generally, since the alternatives tend to be worse; but when picking members for a special purpose sub-entity with a specific mandate it seems like “do you utterly and intentionally suck at the purpose of this sub-entity?” might be a reasonable question to have on the admission application.
For general UN membership you pretty much have to admit anyone with an army and some postage stamps; but it sort of defeats the purpose of specialist bodies to admit with complete disregard for subject matter competence.
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Long overdue.
We are not other sites.
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Damn, it’s only Tuesday. This is going to be one helluva long week.
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I don’t really see any evidence of dysfunction at this organization though. Israel doesn’t like them, we all know that. From what I’ve seen though there’s really little to complain about regarding the actions of the organization. They seem to be doing their job. Yes you have a variety a repressive countries represented, but they’re not steering the ship.
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