On the UN Human Rights Council, quitters are losers
THE Trump administration struck a blow to yet another multilateral institution last week when it slashed funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA is not a perfect institution, but it has provided critical services, including health care and education, to Palestinian refugees since 1950. What will be next on the chopping block? We fear it may be the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
After all, Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, has placed caustic criticism of the council near the centre of the US government’s current UN policy. Even before it withdrew from the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, turned its back on the UN migration compact and lashed out at UNRWA, the Trump administration threatened to make for the exits in Geneva if the council could not meet US demands. The White House wanted the council to tighten its election procedures to make it harder for abusive governments to join and to get rid of a standing agenda item that singled out Israel for a unique level of criticism.
The problem isn’t so much with the administration’s objectives for the council (we support both of them), but with the way Trump has chosen to pursue them, seeking to use the threat of quitting as leverage. This strategy won’t work and will damage both the council and US human rights policy. Here’s why:
At the Human Rights Council, the prospect of US withdrawal isn’t regarded so much as a threat as an opportunity by the many authoritarian governments that are eager to swarm in and fill the vacuum. Before the US joined the council and appointed a fulltime ambassador in 2010, countries like China, Cuba, and Pakistan ruled the roost. Since then the US’s enormous diplomatic capabilities have helped keep the authoritarians in check. If the United States pulls out, Geneva could once again be a playground for strongmen.
US withdrawal would undermine the council’s good work. A cut-and-run strategy gives short shrift to the valuable work that the council now does, which it would find much harder to continue if the United States were to pull its participation and support.
To offer just a few examples, the council is largely to thank for putting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s grotesque mistreatment of his own people on the global agenda, and it also created a special rapporteur on human rights in Iran.
When Russia and China blocked the Security Council from acting on Syria, Geneva got the wheels of justice turning by creating a commission to document atrocities committed by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In addition, it has taken similar steps in support of accountability, from Myanmar to Libya to Burundi. And the council has also done important work with resolutions on LGBTQ human rights and gender equality that recognise the dignity of people whose own governments seek to deny it.
How much does all of this matter? Quite a lot, according to civil society representatives from around the world. It gives their efforts hope and legitimacy. It points a bright spotlight on dictators and thugs. And it creates a political cost for repressive regimes.
There’s no substitute for the Human Rights Council. The US’s withdrawal strategy presumes there will be plenty of forums where the US can work to advance human rights if it backs away from Geneva. In her June remarks to the Human Rights Council, Haley spoke of “other venues” to which the US might turn. But in the UN system, it’s hard to see what those would be. In the Security Council, Russia and China have vetoes. In the General Assembly, voting blocs are more a hindrance than a help to human rights efforts. Geneva, by comparison, is a pretty good place to do business.
If you want to defend your friends, you have to show up. The US has had more success defending its friends in Gene- va when it has been at the table than when it has walked away. One reason the council’s agenda includes a standing item focused on Israel is that the US sat on the sidelines while that agenda was being negotiated back in 2006. And the Obama administration liked to point out that before it joined the council in 2010, there had been six special sessions focused on Israel in the course of three and a half years, while in the seven-year period after it joined and appointed a full-time ambassador, there was only one.
The United States’ own credibility on human rights is at low ebb. The US very much needs the council to deliver human rights messages that the country cannot effectively deliver itself. The Trump administration has not been uniform in its approach to human rights and has undermined its own messaging capacity – including through Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s effort last spring to separate “values” from “policy”, and a leaked memo authored by one of his senior aides arguing that the United States should reserve human rights criticism for its adversaries.
Against this backdrop, human rights criticism coming from Washington has a tinny ring to it, particularly when levelled at a country like Iran with which the US has a deeply fraught relationship. Perhaps this is one reason why Haley announced earlier this month that she would urge Geneva to hold a special session on Iran’s heavy-handed response to protests.
We are not arguing that the United States should shelve reform efforts. Improving the council’s election procedures and addressing its structural bias against Israel would make it a far stronger institution. But if the US is serious about reform, it will need to mount a serious diplomatic effort with a realistic timeline, actual leverage (that goes beyond a threat to quit), and persistent seniorlevel engagement. It will also have to be prepared to proceed in steps. The United States might, for example, seek to persuade traditional partners to agree voluntarily to measures that would advance its goals while it builds support for more formal and durable changes. Certainly it could do more in the way of actively recruiting candidates with strong human rights records.
Will it? We fear that the administration is less than fully serious about reform, and instead sees the council as a sacrificial lamb in waiting, to be offered up when Washington encounters a weighty frustration with the UN system. If that is the case, then it is just a matter of time until the US walks. Still, we will hold out hope that situations like the recent Iran unrest will remind the administration of what would be lost if it were to take this unfortunate step, for the US, its partners, and vulnerable people around the world.