With new president Joe Biden seemingly intent on undoing everything Donald Trump did over the past four years, he was bound to begin rejoining the globalist pacts that Trump got us out of. But on Monday, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley pleaded with Biden to pull back on one particular pledge — rejoining the laughingstock known as the UN Human Rights Council.
Biden has already rejoined the nonsensical Paris Climate Agreement and the ineffective World Health Organization, which botched early COVID-19 response. But according to Haley, rejoining the UN Human Rights Council would be a bridge to far.
“The UN Human Rights Council is a cesspool of political bias that makes a mockery of human rights. If Biden rejoins the council whose membership includes dictatorial regimes & some of the world’s worst human rights violators, it will fly in the face of our fight for human rights.”
While on the campaign trail in 2019, Biden promised to rejoin the Human Rights Council should he be elected.
“We will rebuild American diplomatic capacity to support and defend human rights around the globe, including through international institutions. We will rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council and work to ensure that body truly lives up to its values.”
Biden is set to deliver on that promise, even though the current membership of the council is littered with serial human-rights abusers such as China, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, Cameroon, Libya, Sudan, Venezuela, and Cuba.
In May of 2020, then-candidate Biden blamed the Trump administration for clearing the path for Cuba to be elected to the council, even though Cuba was also a member of the council during the Obama administration when he served as vice-president.
“Trump’s international failures have cleared a path for Cuba to join the UN Human Rights Council. This would betray Cuba’s political prisoners and further undermine US diplomacy. As president, I will lead by empowering the Cuban people and defending human rights,” Biden tweeted.
Biden wasn’t clear exactly on what those “international failures” were. Were they the peace deals Trump brokered between Israel and Morocco, Israel and Sudan, Israel and Bahrain, or Israel and the United Arab Emirates?
The Trump administration withdrew from the council in 2018, citing deep-seated bias against the State of Israel.
“The council must end its practice of singling out Israel for criticism,” Haley wrote at the time. “When the council passes more than 70 resolutions against Israel, a country with a strong human rights record, and just 7 resolutions against Iran, a country with an abysmal human rights record, you know something is seriously wrong.”
Haley resigned from her post at the United Nations in October of 2018. Her time at the UN was notable in that she was typically a strong voice for the United States when it came to making decisions that the UN objected to. In particular, after the United States formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the UN voted to condemn the United States for the decision. Prior to the vote, Haley issued a warning to the body.
“The United States will remember this day in which it was sought out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation,” Haley said. “We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the U.N. and we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they often do, to pay even more and use our influence for their benefit.”
The United States does not belong in the United Nations at all. But if we are there, shouldn’t it be as a voice of reason, strength, and, when necessary, to carry a big diplomatic stick? Rejoining the Human Rights Council, with its long membership list of human-rights abusers, sends exactly the wrong message to the world. It says, plainly, that we are willing to sit on a council dedicated to human rights alongside serial human-rights abusers.
Of course, the chances that Joe Biden will see the irony in such a decision that are extremely slim.
