Something unusual happened this week at the United Nations. The US government has decided not to run for a second term on the Human Rights Council. The country is required to take a one-year vacation after serving two three-year terms, but the Biden administration chose to step down after one term. That is extremely unusual. what happened?
There are various theories floating around, but in my opinion, Israel emerges as one of the big reasons. More importantly, Joe Biden has refused to suspend or condition large-scale US arms sales and military aid to Israel, which is militarily bombing and starving Palestinian civilians in Gaza. .
Elections to the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva are carried out by the 193-member United Nations General Assembly in New York. The vote would have been a rare opportunity for governments around the world to vote on US complicity in Israeli war crimes. The US might have lost. The Biden administration appears to have calculated that it is better to withdraw voluntarily than face such shameful denials.
To understand the rationale, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of Human Rights Council elections. The council was established in 2006, replacing the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The commission had become a collection of repressive governments that joined to violate human rights, not to promote them. They voted regularly to protect themselves and their fellow citizens.
The new council introduced a means to avoid that farce: competitive elections. Rather than the backroom deal that brought the world’s dictators and tyrants to the old committee, each of the UN’s five regional groups will propose candidates, which will then be voted on by full UN members. The idea was that a highly abusive government could be rejected.
An usher receives a ballot from a representative from Myanmar during the Human Rights Council membership election held at United Nations Headquarters on October 9, 2024. Photo: Bianca Otero/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock
Things went well for the first few years. Every year, Human Rights Watch and its allies select the most unsuitable candidates for the council, and each year they either withdraw their candidacy (Syria, Iraq) or fail (Belarus, Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka). It was. Even Russia was defeated in 2016 when Russian planes bombed Syrian civilians in eastern Aleppo. It was defeated again in 2023 due to attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
It worked similarly this year, with the General Assembly citing Saudi Arabia’s killing of hundreds of Ethiopian migrants trying to enter the country from Yemen, its bombing of Yemeni civilians in the not-so-distant past, and its crackdown on dissidents, including women. He rejected Saudi Arabia for the second time. Human rights defenders and their brazen murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
But to avoid that embarrassment, local groups started taking advantage of the system. Many people began proposing as many candidates as there were vacancies, effectively robbing the General Assembly of choice. In this way, countries such as Burundi, Eritrea and Sudan have gained seats in parliament. Sometimes there were still competitive candidates (Saudi Arabia lost this year, as there were six governments seeking five Asia-Pacific seats), but uncompetitive candidates became the norm. are.
Even Western groups, despite ostensibly supporting effective councils, typically offer uncompetitive policies. The usual explanation is that Western governments do not want to bother with the need to lobby the General Assembly’s 193 members for support. However, this has left Western governments unable to pressure other regions to offer competitive materials. The council suffered from diplomatic laziness.
This year, it seems something has gone wrong with this cozy, albeit harmful, habit. Western groups won three seats in this week’s elections. Iceland, Spain and Switzerland were all expected to be in the ring, with the United States seeking a renewal for its term, which is coming to an end. Three years ago, when a similar possibility of four Western candidates for three positions emerged, Washington persuaded Italy to withdraw, allowing it to run unopposed.
But this year, none of the other three candidates, apparently from Western countries, were willing to abandon their quest. This may reflect Donald Trump’s chances of winning next month’s US presidential election. In 2018, he infamously gave up his council seat in protest of US criticism of Israel. Iceland, Spain, and Switzerland must have wondered why President Trump was delaying the U.S. candidacy when it could soon be invalidated.
United Nations General Assembly President Dennis Francis reads out the election results for new members of the Human Rights Council at United Nations Headquarters in New York City, October 10, 2023. Photo: Bryan R Smith/AFP/Getty Images
In any case, there was a possibility that a Biden administration would take office. After all, why not let the countries of the world choose the best three of the four candidates, as was originally planned? Instead, it bowed. Yeah, maybe it was just being kind – to Iceland, which took over the seat when Trump renounced it. to Switzerland, the host country of the council. But in Spain? The Spanish government is one of the most vocal defenders of Palestinian rights in Europe. And Washington is usually not reluctant to do everything it can for Israel.
It is rare for the United Nations General Assembly to have the opportunity to vote on actions by the U.S. government. A competitive vote on the UN Human Rights Council would have provided such an opportunity. That vote was easy given the widespread anger over Israeli war crimes in Gaza and Biden’s refusal to use the vast influence of U.S. arms sales and military aid to stop them. It could have resulted in overwhelming repudiation by the Biden administration. Rather than face a potentially humiliating rebuke, the US government withdrew its candidacy.
These events demonstrate once again how devastating Biden’s support for Israel is to the human rights cause. Thanks to its diplomatic and economic power, the US government can be an important force for human rights. Outside of Israel, Israel’s presence on the Council has generally been instrumental in defending human rights.
But U.S. credibility has already been undermined by Washington’s close alliances with repressive countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and by Biden’s aiding and abetting of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. It is greatly damaged. Biden is seen as constitutionally unable to make changes, and human rights protections have suffered.
That doesn’t mean the end of that defense. Despite President Trump’s withdrawal, the Human Rights Council functioned well. Without the baggage of Washington’s ideological hostility, Latin American democracies succeeded in their efforts to condemn Venezuela. Tiny Iceland has secured condemnation for the mass summary executions sparked by former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”, which President Trump supported.
But at a time when serious threats loom from Russia, Ukraine, China, Sudan, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere, it is sad that the Biden administration is sulking instead of joining us on the front lines of defending human rights. . Return from Geneva to Washington. He has said he will not run for parliament again until 2028.
