"At least one million Muslim Uyghurs have been confined to concentration camps in the People's Republic of China's Western province of Xinjiang. In one day alone last month in Russia, 5,400 political protesters were arrested decrying the detention of Putin critic Aleksei Navalny. Where is the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), putatively the world's premier guardian of human rights and fundamental freedoms? Absent. Notwithstanding, as promised, the Joe Biden Administration announced that the United States would rejoin the Council as an observer, reversing a Trump Administration decision to leave it in 2018.
The Biden administration is casting its decision as a means to improve the Council. As the Secretary of State Tony Blinken noted in the announcement, 'We recognize that the Human Rights Council is a flawed body, in need of reform to its agenda, membership, and focus, including its disproportionate focus on Israel.' Disproportionate barely covers it: alone among the world's countries, Israel is subject to a separately focused so-called "Agenda Item," number 7, titled 'Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.' Every other country in the world is examined under Agenda Item 4, titled 'Human rights situations that require the Council's attention.'
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But the Council's obsession with Israel is only the tip of the iceberg of HRC failures. Blinken insists that '[w]hen it works well, the Human Rights Council shines a spotlight on countries with the worst human rights records and can serve as an important forum for those fighting injustice and tyranny.' True, when it is not attacking Israel, the Council can condemn human right situations in pariah states like North Korea or adopt resolutions requesting technical assistance with willing governments such as Georgia.
But when it comes to the tough cases and influential governments, the Council is almost invariably silent. Specifically, the HRC has been unable or unwilling to adopt resolutions condemning serious human rights abuses by China, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, and other human rights offenders, even when the United States was a member of the Council...."