US President Donald Trump proposed to cut off US engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council and extend the funding ban on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, an unnamed White House official said to US media channels.
Related notes reported that on the very Tuesday when Netanyahu is to be hosted by the White House, long a critic of the UN and especially of UNRWA, President Trump is due to sign executive orders for withdrawal from the two UN bodies.
Since starting a second term in office on January 20, he has already withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) and from the Paris climate deal, a self-same withdrawal that he took during his first term and that has been undone by the Biden administration.
Trump’s withdrawal of the US also would not be a new feat, with the very first withdrawal also having taken place on the watch of Trump during his first term.
Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the UN who served under Trump when the United States left the Human Rights Council in 2018, referred to it as a “chronicbias” against its member states, particularly Israel. The 47 members on the council serve four-year terms and conduct periodic reviews of the human rights records of UN member states, one of which includes the US, due to its next review in August.
At the council’s previous review of the US in 2020, countries made recommendations on how Washington might work on its human rights record, including, among other things, to tackle racism and to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison. The appointment of independent UN special rapporteurs to serve as expert members on human rights issues also falls under the council’s responsibilities.
Some UN special rapporteurs have mapped allegations of genocide on Israel in Gaza, including Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
An elected member of the council, most recently the US from 2022-2024, has taken that opportunity to change the platform of their abuses of human rights in the case of other countries.