Today, Explained - UNHRC ya later

Episode Date: June 20, 2018

The United States has been threatening to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council for some time, but President Trump and Ambassador Nikki Haley made it official last night. The announcement comes just one day after the council called the act of separating kids from their parents “unconscionable.” Foreign Policy’s Colum Lynch explains why the withdrawal is bad news for the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today we're FaceTiming. Who knows what we'll do tomorrow? Yes. You're always surprising me. You always take me by surprise. Here's a surprise. Uber's moving forward, listening to feedback so they can improve and get better with every trip. They're building new features to take the stress out of your pickup and working on ways to keep

you better protected and connected throughout your ride. You can practice more by going to uber.com slash moving forward. Nailed it. The biggest story in the United States right now is a human rights story. It's this debate over the rights of people who are crossing our southern border, how the United States government should treat them and their children. On Monday, the United Nations Human Rights Council called the United States out for separating kids from their parents at the border. And then last night... The United States is officially withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council.

In doing so, I want to make it crystal clear that this step is not a retreat from human rights commitments. On the contrary, we take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights. No word on whether this is quid pro quo for the Human Rights Council talking smack about U.S. immigration policy. The U.S. has certainly said it might leave this Human Rights Council before. But what is clear is that the country just got a little more isolated. To me, it feels like it's just another step towards the U.S. kind of pulling away from the world. We've had over the last few months, the U.S. pulling out of the sort of landmark nuclear agreement with the Iranians.

The U.S. is sort of imposing trade restrictions on a number of American allies, sort of fighting with the world over Israel and Palestine. So to me, this is sort of part of a larger picture of the U.S. kind of gradually withdrawing from international institutions that they had been so instrumental in creating. Colm Lynch reports on the United Nations for Foreign Policy magazine. He works out of the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan. My office is sort of on the third floor of the main secretariat building, and I'm about, it takes me about 20 seconds to get to the Security Council and about maybe 40 seconds to get to the General Assembly. All the diplomats are kind of walking around the corridors. So it's a great place to get reporting done. Colin, what does the Human Rights Council actually do?

I mean, its real job is shining a light on atrocities. And so there is the question about what impact does that have? And there is a general feeling that shining a light on human rights violations is becoming a less powerful strategy than it was in the past. And that's largely because you have influential, powerful countries, including China and now including the United States under the Trump administration, who are withdrawing from this notion of promoting human rights. Both the previous Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and the President have really shown little interest in sort of making human rights a priority. And I haven't seen, you know, a strong

indication that the new Secretary of State has made this a sort of a central part of his, you know, foreign policy agenda. You've heard these stories about these notorious human rights abusers who are on, ironically, tragically, the Human Rights Council. Who are they presently? I can tell you right now, I mean, there's countries like, you know, Cuba is on it. We now proceed with the review of Cuba. Harsh prison conditions, arbitrary arrests, selective prosecution, denial of free trial. This is from the State Department, our State Department. Saudi Arabia is on it.

Council member Saudi Arabia, for example, has refused to accede to a number of major human rights treaties and optional protocols, and the kingdom systematically suppresses fundamental freedoms and carries out torture and executions against peaceful critics. Thank you. The next speaker is the distinguished delegate from Venezuela. Venezuela. In Venezuela, exercising free speech is fraught with risks. Political dissent is criminalized. Property is capriciously and unlawfully seized.

Opposition politicians are disqualified from elections, and media critical of the government is simply shut down. Russia is usually on it, but Russia, you know, interestingly enough, was voted off of the council in the last vote. China is usually a member and China works very actively to undercut human rights at the Human Rights Council. So conservatives in the U.S. who don't like the Human Rights Council, they will use that as an argument to say we should pull out because, you know, we don't want to give the Human Rights Council, which provides China with an opportunity to, you know, squelch human rights with any sort of legitimacy. The only thing worse than a council that does almost nothing to protect human rights is a council that covers for human rights abuses and is therefore an obstacle to progress and an impediment to change. And the other side will say, look, China is rising and, you know, we can't turn over the theater of human rights to the Chinese. We need to be in there fighting it out and trying to

promote universal human rights. Is this like going to the DMV and just getting a driver's license without having to take the test? How does a country like China or Saudi Arabia, where women just sort of got the right to drive like a week ago, get on this council? Life is a little different if you're a big power at the UN. So if you're one of the permanent five members of the UN Security Council, which is Britain, France, the United States, Russia, and China, there used to be almost a kind of unspoken rule that they could get membership on anybody in the UN. So generally, big powers have a lot of diplomatic power. I mean, China has enormous commercial interest around the world. They have a lot of diplomatic power.

They can get votes. I mean, they have a lot of supporters in Africa. They have a lot of business dealings in Latin America. They have a lot of important, you know, business to do with Europeans and with the United States. So they, you know, they have a way of being able to use that sort of economic power as a sort of major global player to win votes. How about countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela? How do they get on? Is it just having friends in powerful places? Yeah, I mean, let's take an example like Cuba, right? So Venezuela is sort of similar. I mean, these are countries that have devoted enormous energy into developing a diplomatic profile at the UN. So the Cubans, you know, while they're criticized, I think rightly for having an

abysmal human rights record and having very little sort of political freedom at the UN, they are seen broadly as a real serious diplomatic contributor. And they work very closely with other governments on a whole range of issues. And generally, they don't have a lot of trouble winning votes. Venezuela, it's a bit different, but you would have, you know, certain countries that want to align themselves on the side that is not the United States, Russia, China, others in Latin America, Ecuador, Bolivia, there's a whole block of countries that will kind of rally behind those countries who are the target of American pressure. Does the Human Rights Council have teeth? Is that part of the reason the United States would stick

around even with all these shady characters sitting next to it? Yeah, I mean, does it have teeth in the way that the Security Council has teeth? No. I mean, the UN Security Council has mad powers. I mean, they can authorize military intervention. They can apply sanctions on countries. They can apply sanctions on individuals. And there's very little recourse anybody has to challenge their authority. The Human Rights Council is more fuzzy, and it's really about perceptions. It's really about public pressure.

If you watch the news, you would frequently see the High Commission for Human Rights, Prince Zayed, Rod Hussein, who has been, I think, one of the most outspoken critics of countries who engage in human rights abuses that we've seen at the UN, you know, ever. I mean, he's been very tough on the United States, very tough on Trump. In the past six weeks, nearly 2,000 children have been forcibly separated from their parents. The American Association of Pediatrics has called this cruel practice

government-sanctioned child abuse. He has criticized the ban on countries with predominantly Muslim population from coming into the country. So can he force the United States to stop doing those things? No. Can he stop China from behaving badly towards its people? No.

But it is meaningful and I think useful to have somebody making the case and someone in a prominent position doing that. So like I say, a lot of it is about the optics, but the optics I think are extremely important. Countries care about their reputations. When it comes to reputations, there's one country that the UN's Human Rights Council can't talk enough shit about.

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Oh, okay. Colm, how far back do America's issues with the Human Rights Council go? The United States' relationship with the Human Rights Council began sort of on the wrong foot. So the Human Rights Council was established in 2006. So you had the Bush administration. The U.S. ambassador at the time was John Bolton, who is now President Trump's national security advisor. And he was very, very negative about the council. He has this famous line where he said, We want a butterfly. We don't intend to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a success. So he has wanted to get the United States out of

the Human Rights Council since the very beginning, and he's succeeded in persuading the Bush administration to do that. Now, President Obama decided that they recognized or they accepted the notion that there were deep flaws in the council and that it was devoting a disproportionate amount of time and attention to criticizing Israel. But the rationale for joining was that we could do two things. We could help to defend Israel from inside the council, and we could also work very hard at trying to get the council to refocus its energy on what they believed is the most critical human rights challenges. So creating commission of inquiry, looking at atrocities by the Syrian government as well as the opposition, focusing on human rights atrocities,

massive human rights atrocities in North Korea where they also set up a commission of inquiry. So the argument was that we can do more to protect Israel if we're inside than if we're out. And there is some statistical basis to that rationale. And that is that the Human Rights Council used to devote more time to Israel during the Bush administration, something like around 15% of its time. And under the Obama administration, it was about 8%. And how did so much time get to be spent on Israel to begin with? Well, I mean, all this goes back to the creation of the Human Rights Council.

So when they first negotiated the sort of rules of engagement, they created this special category on which the council would focus. It's called Agenda 7, and it's the only country, Israel is the only country that has its own special agenda. And that means every time the Human Rights Council meets, they talk about Israel. And so Israel has sort of said that this is unfair, and the U.S. has also said that that's unfair.

This disproportionate focus and unending hostility towards Israel is clear proof that the council is motivated by political bias, not by human rights. So that really, you know, obviously drove the Israelis crazy, the Americans. And why did that agenda item get approved to begin with? And who was really pushing for it? You know, the Arab world has big numbers, and they generally are able to rally other regional groups like the Africans. And so they often can trade those votes with other big blocks. And so if the Arabs really care about something, they have a lot of influence and leverage to get other regions to join forces with them. The UN is kind of a numbers game in a lot of ways. And I think in a way, that's what sort of conservatives find so maddening is

that the US has to work so hard to sort of counter this sort of imbalance on the numbers. And now that the US is leaving the Human Rights Council, does that leave room for someone else to sort of step in and shape the agenda? Well, clearly. I mean, not just the Human Rights Council, but let's look at the role of China on the issue of human rights at the United Nations. I mean, they have been on a range of fronts pushing back on human rights promotion. There was a case recently of a Uyghur dissident who lives in Germany who tried to speak at the United Nations in New York, and the Chinese government had him thrown out of the building.

He was eventually left back in, but not until the United States and Germany had an office in the Secretary General's office that dealt with mass atrocities and human rights. And China succeeded in cutting back the budget for that office, and they shut that down a couple of months ago. China cares about the issue of human rights because they feel that it's sort of a Western imposition, and they've made it clear that they're committed to fight back against it. And I think the Americans pulling out of the most important international institution dealing with human rights with all of its imperfections is going to leave space open to countries like China. This Human Rights council sounds deeply flawed and has been for over a decade but is the trump administration in pulling away from it not not seeing the dangers of having say china

fill the void and and and can that be sort of seen in all the other agreements and and treaties that we're sort of pulling away from? No, I think they know what they're doing. And well, I think that they understand what they're doing. And I think they see the broader kind of multilateral system, including the UN, as bodies that constrain, you know, the world's great power. And they, I think, feel confident that in a world in which big powers vie for influence and power and economic dominance, that they can do better in this environment than they can through the, you know, annoying, maddening sort of work of diplomacy. And do you personally think that's a safe bet to make? No, no, I don't. I mean, I think that, I mean, I, you know, I think that they're

creating enormous chaos in the international system and huge amounts of uncertainty. And, you know, you have a whole series of sort of institutions, sort of dealing with economic issues, trade, security, that this administration is blowing up. And I think that it's creating a lot of unpredictability. And, you know, I wouldn't bet that it's all going to turn out great for us. Colm Lynch writes about the UN for foreign policy. I'm Sean Ramos-Verm, this is Today Explained. Hey guys, my name is Kate Sparrow. I'm from New Zealand, but I'm currently living in Sydney, Australia. I listen to Today Explained every morning when i get to work and my favorite episode uh so far is probably kneecapped i didn't really know a lot about it i'd seen stuff about it online with all the players taking

knee during the anthems but you guys explained it really well it gave a lot of backstory i didn't realize it had been going on for so long um so thank you for explaining that. Shout out to the Twitter today underscore explained. Thanks, guys. Thanks again to Uber for supporting the show today. Uber is moving forward listening to feedback so they can improve and get better with every trip. They're building new features, take the stress out of your pickup and working on new ways to keep you better protected and connected throughout your ride. You can find out more by going to uber.com slash moving forward.