A Human Rights Council Worthy of the Name

"In 2009, the Obama administration reversed standing U.S. foreign policy by joining and funding with taxpayer dollars the U.N. Human Rights Council - a multilateral body tasked with promoting and defending human rights and upholding the tenets enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice argued that the administration believes that 'working from within, [it] can make the council a more effective forum to promote and protect human rights.' However, since 2009, the council has been bad, if not worse, than it has ever been. Only this time around, it has been given the appearance of legitimacy, thanks to the administration's continued presence on and funding for that body.

In recent years, the council has become so disconnected from its mandate that it doesn't even feign impartiality or purport to promote universal human rights. In fact, the opposite is true: The council has become the tool for the world's dictators to shield themselves from scrutiny and obscure their heinous actions, perverting human rights to whitewash gross violations and effectively ensuring that the body cannot do what it was designed to do.

In just the past several weeks, the U.N. Human Rights Council called special sessions to invite Palestinian Authority leader Abu Mazen and Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro to address the council. The former has openly incited violence against Israel for years while ignoring the plight of the Palestinian people, and the latter is responsible for countless human rights abuses that have led to untold innocent civilian deaths. These thugs should be called in front of the council and held accountable for their actions, not lauded and encouraged by like-minded sympathizers...

Instead of focusing on the perpetrators of gross human rights violations and working to protect the millions across the world that suffer, the U.N. Human Rights Council opts instead to single out the one country in a Middle East region that respects and defends human rights for all of its citizens - the democratic Jewish state of Israel. The council's agenda contains a permanent item for criticism of Israel - a distinction no other country shares. Since 2006, the council has passed more than 61 resolutions and produced several mendacious reports alleging Israeli human rights abuses while virtually ignoring every other dire human rights situation in the world...

It has been nearly seven years, and it is clear that President Obama's strategy of change from within at the council has been an abject failure, or human rights is so low on the president's priority list that he's unwilling to make the necessary effort - or both.

Mr. Obama must demand fundamental reforms of the body, or he must lead an effort to have it dissolved and replaced with a credible alternative..."