Over three years after the Trump administration quit the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for its obsessive anti-Israel bias, the Biden administration returned to the organization, with the US receiving 168 votes in the elections held by the UN General Assembly on Thursday.
Israel received the second-lowest number of votes, surpassing only Eritrea, which received 144 votes.
Speaking after the vote, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield promised to “oppose the Council’s disproportionate attention on Israel, which includes the Council’s only standing agenda item targeting a single country.”
In remarks to reporters on Thursday, State Department spokesman Ned Price reiterated a similar message: “We have concerns with the council,” Price said. “We will vigorously oppose the council’s disproportionate attention on Israel, which includes the council’s only standing agenda item targeting a single country.”
“The United States should not be lending its legitimacy to a body that includes perpetrators of human rights abuses like China, Venezuela and Cuba,” said Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, after the vote. “Additionally, the council continues to disproportionately spend the majority of its time and attention persecuting our ally Israel. The Biden administration will pat itself on the back for rejoining this flawed body. However, it will have done so without securing any necessary reforms, while failing to support human rights around the world.”
According to Hillel Neuer, director of UN Watch, only 31.9% of the UNHRC’s members are free democracies.
“Elections were designed to weed out the world’s worst rights abusers,” Neuer said. “But oppressive regimes like China, Cuba, Libya, Russia and Eritrea routinely win elections, and the stamp of international legitimacy.”
Exactly as I predicted.
Now only 31.9% of the 2022 UNHRC members will be free democracies.
The 68.1% include
🇨🇺 Cuba
🇱🇾 Libya
🇶🇦 Qatar
🇨🇳 China
🇷🇺 Russia
🇪🇷 Eritrea
🇸🇴 Somalia
🇵🇰 Pakistan
🇻🇪 Venezuela
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan
🇨🇲 Cameroon
🇲🇾 Malaysia
🇧🇴 Bolivia…I’m not making this up. https://t.co/fwFle1aQNs
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 14, 2021
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
The US being in the UNHRC is like a hashgacha on tarfus
So… just the regular amount of bias as long as it’s not disproportionate, hmmm…..