US opts out of running for reelection on UN Human Rights Council
Biden administration decides not to seek second term on council, which it has frequently criticized for obsessive hostility to Israel
The Biden administration has decided not to seek a second consecutive term on the much-maligned UN Human Rights Council, the State Department said Monday.
The administration had made US membership on the Geneva-based council a priority when it took office in 2021 after former president Donald Trump had withdrawn from the body, citing its anti-Israel bias. Since returning to the council, the administration has frequently taken issue with its votes on the Middle East and other issues.
“We decided not to seek another (term) on the Human Rights Council at this time because we are engaged with our allies about the best way to move forward,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
Elections for the 47-member council are held by the UN General Assembly with candidate countries coming from various geographic groups. The three other candidates — Iceland, Spain and Switzerland — from the US geographic group known as Western Hemisphere and Others, or WEOG, would be able to represent American interests and values, Miller said.
“All of them are countries with a very strong record of support for human rights,” he said. “We thought they would carry the flag forward, but we will continue to remain engaged on human rights issues.”
The council was created in 2006 to replace a human rights commission discredited because of some members’ poor rights records. But the new council soon came to face similar criticism, including that rights abusers sought seats to protect themselves and their allies. The US has criticized the selection of candidates with poor rights records on uncontested slates.
The US has been the most vocal defender of Israel on the world stage and has repeatedly joined it in denouncing alleged anti-Israel bias in the UN rights body, while Spain, in contrast, was one of three European countries to announce they would recognize a Palestinian state — a move Israel criticized.
Following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the UN General Assembly last Friday, in which he denounced the international body as a “swamp of antisemitic bile,” US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield acknowledged what she said was an “unfair focus on Israel,” but dismissed the assertion that the institution as a whole was antisemitic.
What the US saw as the council’s excessive criticism of Israel culminated in the Trump administration’s withdrawal from it in June 2018.
In announcing the Biden administration would reverse Trump’s decision, Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized the withdrawal, saying it “did nothing to encourage meaningful change, but instead created a vacuum of US leadership, which countries with authoritarian agendas have used to their advantage.”
