US warning over its UN Human Rights Council role

US warning over its UN Human Rights Council role

THE US says it is considering what part it will play on the UN’s Human Rights Council, highlighting what it calls a “biased” stance on Israel.

UN ambassador Nikki Haley said it was “hard to accept” that resolutions had been passed against Israel, a US ally, but none were considered on Venezuela.

She also said not enough had been done to criticise Iran, a “country with an abysmal human rights record”.

Mrs Haley was making her first address to the council in Geneva.

“The United States is looking carefully at this council and our participation in it. We see some areas for significant strengthening,” she said.

“Being a member of this council is a privilege and no country who is a human rights violator should be allowed a seat at the table.

“It’s hard to accept that this council has never considered a resolution on Venezuela and yet it adopted five biased resolutions, in March, against a single country, Israel. It is essential that this council address its chronic anti-Israel bias if it is to have any credibility.”

Venezuela has been in political turmoil for month and dozens of protesters have been killed.

‘Anti-Israel circus’

Criticism of the 47-member council was repeated on the Twitter feed of the US mission to the UN on Tuesday.

The council is able only to order investigations and record criticism of countries it judges to have violated human rights, but it acts as a crucial diplomatic tool.

In recent months, it has issued resolutions on human rights in North Korea, Haiti and Myanmar, among other countries.

In March, the UK government accused the UNHRC of an “unacceptable pattern of bias“ by singling Israel out as the only country subject to mandatory discussion at every session.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously called the body “an anti-Israel circus which attacks the only democracy in the Middle East and ignores the blatant violations of Iran, Syria and North Korea”.

Israel has faced international criticism for allowing Jewish settlements on the West Bank

And in 2013, Israel ended its working relationship with the group after it decided to investigate Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Mrs Haley’s comments came after an opening address in Geneva by UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein calling on Israel to withdraw from territories it captured in the 1967 war.

He condemned what he called “a half-century of deep suffering under an occupation imposed by military force”.

What is the UN Human Rights Council?

• Created in 2006 to replace the UN’s Human Rights Commission, which was widely discredited for electing member states with questionable track records on human rights
• All of the 47 members are elected for three-year terms
• The council aims to shine a spotlight on rights abuses by adopting resolutions, but has faced similar criticism to the commission
• US President George W Bush boycotted the council but the decision was reversed under President Barack Obama
• In 2013, human rights groups complained when China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Vietnam were elected to the body

Israel has occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights since the war, 50 years ago this week. The UN also considers the Gaza Strip, which Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of in 2005, as part of occupied Palestinian territory.

Israel and the Palestinians blame each other for the failure to resolve the final status of the occupied territories after years of on-off peace talks.

In an opinion article for the Washington Post last Friday, Mrs Haley called for a change in the procedure in electing new members to the council, saying that “the presence of multiple human rights-violating countries on the Human Rights Council has damaged both the reputation of the council and the cause of human rights”.

Among the current members is the key US ally, Saudi Arabia, which has been accused of rights violations, and whose accession to the group in 2013 was criticised. -bbc.com