Posted on 06/06/2008 8:28:42 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
The United States has quietly informed Western allies of its intention to walk away from the U.N. Human Rights Council, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
The U.S. delegation has observer status, with the right to speak, in the 47-member state forum, which meets in Geneva, and has never stood for election to the Council since it was set up two years ago.
Diplomatic sources and rights activists said that U.S. officials had informed the European Union on Friday morning of its intention to halt its involvement in the Council.
"They said they were going to disengage totally," said one representative of a rights watchdog group.
In a Council debate on Friday on the situation in Myanmar, the United States failed to take the floor on a topic on which until now it has always been vocal, a possible sign that it had little further interest in the body. The Council replaced the widely discredited U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
But it is seen by critics as having fallen under control of a bloc of Islamic and African countries, which have a majority when backed by their frequent allies Russia, China and Cuba.
There was no immediate comment from the U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva, home to the U.N. European headquarters.
(Excerpt) Read more at alertnet.org ...
Hurah!
This is good news.
The UN Human rights commission is one of the important international standards in promoting, protecting, and encouraging human rights abuses.
It is an affront to any candid sense of human rights.
I think they would make excellent first candidates for prosecution of any 21st century genocide conditions.
Walk… run would be my choice. ;-)
Forget walking, RUN!
Yawn.
YES, FINALLY!
Just as an aside … we are carrying the majority freight (cost), why do we only have “observer status” in anything that goes on in the U.N.?
Just wondering when they will bulldoze the U.N. HQ. We could save a lot of money by doing it now.
I believe it was our way of protesting who sat on that council. The hypocrisy of it. We took our name out of the nomination process.
It'll piss ya off.
I think you are missing my point.
Because we are paying (for the most part) the bills at the UN, why are we subjected to “observer only” status in any committee or procedure? Whether we walk out or not is not my question. ;-)
Thanks.
And yes it did!
This new one was supposed to be a fresh start. Looks like it wasn't.
Ty for that link. It really does explain why we needed to leave the UN’s so-called “Human Rights” BS. Just when will we kick the Dictator! run UN to the curb?
That was our agreement we made with the un, to keep funding it. Being an observer was our choice. I imagine we were waiting to see if this committee was going to be any different from the old one - it wasn’t - we walked. Hopefully we’ll stop funding it but I don’t think we will.
The U.N. is, by far, our most wasteful use of tax dollars.
I loathe the un. I agree with Boltons opinion about it.
It certainly is. We are reviled by them and still we pay the majority of their budget compared to other countries. The un is a walking talking anti - US and anti-Israeli puss bucket.
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