The White House’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said the United States will cut funding for the United Nations Human Right Council and for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, The Associated Press reported Thursday.
The Trump administration pulled out of the 47-member body in June, accusing it of “unrelenting bias” against Israel and of allowing countries with poor human rights records to be among its members. Israel is the only country that has a dedicated agenda item at council meetings, subjecting it to unprecedented discrimination.
“We are going to de-fund the Human Rights Council,” Bolton said in an interview with the Associated Press, adding that U.S. officials would calculate how much of the U.S. annual budget goes to the rights office and the Human Rights Council.
“We’ll calculate 22 percent of the Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner’s budget, and our remittances to the UN for this budget year will be less 22 percent of those costs — and we’ll say specifically that’s what we’re doing,” Bolton explained. “We expect that impact to occur on the Human Rights Council.”
The United States is the U.N.’s largest single donor, providing about 22 percent of its budget. Ex-Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is set to replace Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein as the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Earlier this month, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley urged the new commissioner to end the bias against Israel.
“The UN has failed to adequately address major human rights crises in Iran, North Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere, or stop its chronic, disproportionate obsession with Israel. It is up to Ms. Bachelet to speak out against these failures rather than accept the status quo,” Haley said.
On Wednesday, legal expert Professor David Michael Crane resigned from his post as chairman of the U.N. Human Rights panel that is probing possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza. A statement by Crane cited “personal circumstances,” for the decision. Israel had protested the creation of the probe, saying it was bias for not exploring the actions of all parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including Hamas’ use of human shields.
[Photo: Matt Perich / Flickr ]
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