The US will push for reforms to keep the UN Human Rights Council relevant, senior US diplomat Nikki Haley said on Tuesday in Geneva, while making clear that Washington could withdraw from the body if it fails to change.
Nikki Haley, in the first visit to the Human Rights Council by America's top diplomat at the United Nations, trained most of her focus on alleged abuses by Venezuela's government, a relatively easy target in that President Nicolas Maduro has increasingly run afoul of some of his Latin American neighbors.
The 47-member UN Human Rights Council was set up in 2006 after its predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights, was replaced following criticism it failed to hold human rights violators to account. "We seek to reestablish the council's legitimacy", Haley said.
"We're starting to see a turn in New York", Haley told him.
"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", she said.
She called for the Council to address serious human rights violations in Venezuela and for the government of President Nicolas Maduro to address them.
"Tragically, we've been down this road before", Haley later told the Graduate Institute of Geneva. It is her first official visit to the region.
In an increasingly tense meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, the Venezuelan delegation said the forum "needs to be free of politicization and double standards", adding that Washington's absence from the body would be a "gain" for the world.
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"If there was a bit of shame, the USA government should not only give up its position on this Council but also apologize to the world for the atrocities it has committed throughout history", he added.
"Ambassador Haley made the right call today in putting the weight of the United States behind reform of a flawed but crucial body".
"It's hard to take Ambassador Haley seriously on USA support for human rights in light of Trump administration actions like the Muslim ban and immigration crackdowns", Dakwar said.
The American Civil Liberties Union responded by calling on the United States to "practice what it preaches" on human rights.
She has condemned a Security Council resolution demanding that Israel halt the expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land as a "terrible mistake".
Donahoe pointed to the establishment of a special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, which she says "happened because we were there, not because we said we won't come until it gets put on the agenda".
The former governor of SC, have spoken out forcefully against attempts by UN's bodies, mainly the Human Rights Council, to hold Israel accountable for human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza and to force the Jewish state to stop its 50-year-long control of these territories. The ACLU, in a statement, urged the United States to make human rights a priority at home, and then it could "begin to credibly demand the same of other countries overseas".
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