Even more than the rest of the UN, the Human Rights Council always seemed like a garish joke.
Take the world's worst human rights abusers, put them on a body with human rights in the name, and then make sure that it ignores every horrifying atrocity in the headlines while focusing on Israel. It's just too obvious. It has to be a prank, doesn't ir? An idea by some UN bureaucrat to expose the corruption of the organization by making it inescapably obvious.
Except that it was for real.
Obama took us into the UN Human Rights Council. Trump and Nikki Haley took us back out.
The Trump administration announced Tuesday it was withdrawing the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council, with U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley calling the 47-member council “a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias.”
Haley noted the move came after a year where “we did not see any progress.”
Haley threatened the pullout last year, citing longstanding U.S. complaints that the council showed a “chronic bias” against Israel. Calling it "an organization that is not worthy of its name," Haley decried the membership of countries like China, Cuba and Venezuela -- which also have been slammed for human-rights violations.
Of course the media will trot out its expected fake news spin, claiming that the Trump administration is isolating itself from the world and the human rights abusers of the HRC.
Haley has been the driving force behind the latest move, which would be unprecedented in the 12-year history of the council. No country has ever dropped out voluntarily. Libya was kicked out seven years ago.
It's a 12 year history. That's 3 administrations. Bush refused to join. Obama joined. Trump is taking us out. The only administration in this vast 12-year history to want to be involved is Obama. 2 out of 3 chose not to be.
But the media's gotta media.
And the Human Rights Council was only created because its predecessor, the Human Rights Commission had become a complete and total sham. Matters became so bad that the US was voted off it.