Dig you mean “bug empire”?
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And now they have one less. I bet Trump really wanted to steer the ship.
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Just wanted to remind everyone that the U.S. still hasn’t ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, or the Equal Remuneration Convention.
So I have to agree. Any council on human rights that would have the U.S. as a member is not worthy of its name.
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I’m in the middle of reading a history of the Korean War. Every few pages, there is a sentence along the lines of “this form of warfare is prohibited by UN Convention X, but the USA was one of the only countries not to sign that Convention”.
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“You can’t fire me, I quit!”
Left before the sanctions start rolling in.
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At least the US itself hasn’t actually been on the council since 2016, so it’s all good. 
Seriously, though, what globally diverse selection of 47 countries would you trust to do a better job?
Of course, we could forget the whole “global diversity” thing and limit membership to long-standing democracies with a good human rights track record. The meetings could be held in Geneva, and most of the delegates could be home in time for dinner. Only I have no idea how we could find 47 members fulfilling the requirements. Also, would such a Human Rights Council have any global legitimacy?
The problem is, if you look at the planet as a whole, world opinion is not really in favour of Israel. At least not as much as Americans, and to a lesser extent, Europeans, would like it to be. As such, you would need to be explicitly biased to select a global council that would not end up looking biased in this respect.
Yeah, what’s with that?
This is actually an interesting topic… I’m still not quite sure what I despise more… a government that pays lip service the convention while doing nothing about how it’s being violated all over the country, or a democratic nation in which several successive governments run by different parties seem to say “no, we really think that it’s OK for children to be treated that way”. What’s more important? The fact that officially, children have the least rights in the US of all places on the planet, or the fact that America is still far from the worst place to grow up in?
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Just popping back in to remind people why the U.S. has not ratified these human rights treaties.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
Because in this nation, a ratified treaty becomes law and there is a lot of money to be made by abusing the basic human rights of U.S. citizens. We can’t have anything getting in the way of that now can we?
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To further my point about perceptions and the message this action sends…
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“Categorically false” seems like a very, very, strong term in the context. Yes, GC34 tells people to knock it off with the blasphemy laws already; but observe the context as you linked to it:
Up through Resolution 16/18, everything on that page is a successfully pass ‘defamation of religion’ resolution, with the only real concession being the OIC realizing that selling ‘defamation of religion’ would be easier than selling ‘defamation of islam’.
16/18 is slightly fuzzier than its predecessors; going for a softer phrasing in terms of emphasis on deference to religious sensitivities and the goodness of ‘dialog’ and such.
GC34, as you say, actually takes a direct stand against this activity; but, notably unlike all the resolutions, it was an essentially judicial interpretation of the ICCPR, 1976, by the 18 people on the UNHRC, without the need to involve the member states.
Getting a favorable decision at that level is certainly not a bad thing; but to say that it’s reflective of the stance of the relevant member states is sort of like asserting that Roe v. Wade refutes any concerns about an anti-abortion stance in the US.
Sure, getting the relevant jurists to discover the desired implications in the document ratified a safely long time ago is a plus, and beats the alternative; but it is pretty tepidly related to the stance of the UN or UN Human Rights Council.
Indeed, in this case, it seems likely that it’s negatively correlated: hammering out GC34 to clarify and emphasize certain salient points of the ICCPR would have been a complete waste of time if people had actually been paying attention to them previously.
Yeah, they really were farming mankind, weren’t they?
That only occurred to me much later in life though.
This headline oneboxed terribly. Better tl;dr: The US State Department threatened last year to withdraw from the HRC if the UN proceeded to report on the extreme poverty and income inequality that is exclusive to the US among developed nations.
“It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America,” Haley wrote. “In our country, the President, Members of Congress, Governors, Mayors, and City Council members actively engage on poverty issues every day. Compare that to the many countries around the world, whose governments knowingly abuse human rights and cause pain and suffering.”
That quote was from a letter written yesterday. Imagine being the sort of person who could say something like this with a straight face.
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Poking around revealed an interesting story on how Saudi Arabia got onto the UNHRC:
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