Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley slammed the United Nations Human Rights Council during an interview on Fox News on Thursday, strongly advising the Biden administration against rejoining the council.
When asked if the Biden administration should move forward with rejoining the group, Haley simply said, “Don’t do it.”
“We spent a whole year trying to negotiate with 193 countries on changing and reforming the Human Rights Council. Right now, you have every murderer, dictator and thief on that council. If the United States gets back on it, you are giving credibility to a farce of a council that does nothing but hide human rights,” Haley told Fox News.
The former ambassador reiterated her message on Twitter, posting, “The UN Human Rights Council must reform. America should not give credibility to a council that allows murderers, dictators, and thieves to cover their human rights abuses.”
Haley also said joining the council would be “embarrassing” considering the nations that are already involved, including China, a country that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially declared as having committed “crimes against humanity” and a “genocide” against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in China’s Xinjiang region.
Pompeo cited forced labor, forced sterilization, torture and restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, freedom of expression and freedom of movement, in addition to the “arbitrary imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians.
Paul Biya, another member of the council and the second-longest ruler of Cameroon, has also been denounced for his severe treatment of journalists and his opposition.
“If we are the country that has always fought for human rights … if we really want to fight for people who can’t fight for themselves, get these criminals off the Human Rights Council,” Haley said. “Don’t join them and sit with them on a panel and discuss human rights. It’s really embarrassing to do that. And after a year of negotiating when they weren’t willing to reform, why wouldn’t you say, ‘You reform first,’ and then the United States will rejoin.”
“It’s the same thing … with the Paris Climate Agreement. When we got out of that, why wouldn’t you say we will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement when China and India start to hold back on their emissions like the United States is being required to do. Why do they get to wait ten years?”
Earlier this week, Haley called the council a “cesspool of political bias that makes a mockery of human rights.”
“If Biden rejoins the council whose membership includes dictatorial regimes &some of the world’s worst human rights violators, it will fly in the face of our fight for human rights,” she tweeted.
