The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council is yet another step in the administration’s retreat from the world stage. Once widely viewed as a global leader on issues like human rights, the U.S. is now a marginal player, in headlong retreat from the leadership position it has occupied since World War II.
In the postwar era, the U.S. played a major role as an architect of the UN system and other international organizations and agreements that have dramatically advanced the country’s security and its economic and political interests. There is a direct link between the development of this international order and our prosperity and success over the last 70 years. That’s why the withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council is such a mistake.
U.S. leadership in human rights has benefited the country and its allies. In the security realm, the U.S. military led the effort to create the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. These accords have protected American service members for almost seven decades.
On the economic front, the U.S. again took the lead in crafting the so-called Bretton Woods agreements that led to the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These institutions have helped lift billions of people out of poverty. United States consumers and companies have also greatly benefited from the resultant globalized economic order.
Politically, the United Nations in 1946 created a human rights body, then called the Commission on Human Rights. Under the stewardship of Eleanor Roosevelt, the Commission drafted and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that emulates American constitutional guarantees such as freedom of speech and religion, and asserts that people everywhere are entitled to these protections. Governments that have embraced this agenda based on human rights, the rule of law and democracy are America’s closest friends, strongest trading partners and most important strategic allies.
In the name of what it calls an “America First” approach, the current U.S. administration is not only failing to continue these efforts, it is actually leading an attempt to dismantle many of the agreements and institutions that generations of U.S. officials worked so hard to build. The decision to withdraw from the Human Rights Council is the most recent manifestation of this attempt.
International action on human rights has always been a challenge, reflecting deep political divisions among governments. This is especially true in today’s sharply polarized world. The 47 members who now comprise the Council are from governments with widely different perspectives and interests, including a number of states that are themselves serious rights violators. All too often, the Council fails to act when powerful governments like Russia or China commit systematic violations. In other cases, governments pursue political agendas in the name of human rights. For decades a coalition of governments from South Asia and the Middle East pursued a “defamation of religion” resolution that would have seriously compromised free speech. When the Council veers off track, as it did in that instance, the United States often has played a leading role in getting it back on track.
One area where U.S. leadership has been most central is in challenging the Council’s disproportionate focus on Israel, a failing that Republican and Democratic administrations have consistently challenged for decades. By withdrawing from the Council, the Trump administration has forfeited its seat at the table and its standing to challenge this and other areas where the Council continues to come up short.
In an era when human rights are being attacked across the globe, U.S. leadership on these issues is more needed than ever. Walking away from the Human Rights Council will not help protect the rights of the most vulnerable; it will leave them more isolated and insecure. The America First agenda is serving neither America nor its allies around the world.