U.S. Disengages from UN Human Rights System

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WASHINGTON, D.C. November 14 (C-Fam) The United States was a no-show for its scheduled appearance in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) where countries receive recommendations on their human rights records from other member states, leading to speculation that the U.S. government will entirely disengage from the UN human rights system.

This would be an unprecedented decision, even under President Donald Trump, who removed the U.S. from the UN Human Rights Council during his first term but continued to participate in the Universal Period Review. In contrast, starting on the day of Trump’s second inauguration, the U.S. stopped contributing to the reviews of other countries, and did not provide a national report for its own review this year.  Additionally, the U.S. has not engaged with the various UN human rights special mandate holders during their recent visits to the General Assembly.

The U.S. has long been critical of the Human Rights Council’s repeated denunciations of Israel and the fact that some of its members are notorious for their own human rights abuses.  A State Department spokesman said that for the U.S. to take part in the UPR would be to endorse the Human Rights Council, ignoring the council’s failure to condemn the failings of some of its members.”  The U.S. should not be “lectured about our human rights record by the likes of HRC members such as Venezuela, China, or Sudan,” said the official.

In the past, the Trump administration may have been willing to draw distinctions between the governments on the Human Rights Council and the broader UN human rights system, but this distinction seems to be rapidly collapsing.  The U.S. government is well aware that its participation in multilateral organizations lends them both the credibility and the funding the bodies could not get elsewhere.

Due to U.S. funding cuts, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has cancelled sessions of its various treaty monitoring bodies and made reductions to translation services on its website.

While the withdrawal of support for multilateral institutions is in keeping with the Trump administration’s “America First” policy, its critique of the UN human rights system goes further.  For decades, UN experts and committees have exceeded their mandates by pressuring countries to liberalize their abortion laws and embrace homosexuality and gender ideology, despite the absence of these concepts from binding UN human rights treaties.

Ultimately, the UN’s human rights system relies on the credibility it receives from national governments.  Many of the fiercest critics of the U.S. for its refusal to participate in the UPR are those who have sought to use the UPR and other human rights mechanisms to promote controversial agendas like abortion, including the European Union and nongovernmental organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

On Friday, the Human Rights Council adopted a decision encouraging the U.S. to reengage with the UPR.  A spokesman for the European Union pointed out that that the mechanism’s “credibility and impact” depends on universal participation.

Human Rights Watch noted in a statement that numerous civil society organizations had already submitted their own reports to the UPR criticizing the U.S.’s actions on issues including “regression in sexual and reproductive rights and LGBT rights.”

The review of the U.S. in the UPR has been rescheduled for next year.  Given that Trump will still be president, there is little to indicate that the U.S. will take part in the review.

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