US Won’t Seek Reelection to UN Human Rights Council

The opening session of the 53rd U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 19, 2023. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

The United States won’t seek another term on the U.N. Human Rights Council, the State Department said on Oct. 1.

“We decided not to seek another spot on the Human Rights Council this time just because we were engaged with our allies about the best way to move forward,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

Miller said three seats are available on the 47-member council and that four countries had been running for the spots—Spain, Iceland, and Switzerland, as well as the United States.

“All of them are countries with a very strong record of support for human rights. We thought they could carry the flag forward,” Miller stated. “But we will engage—we will continue to remain engaged on human rights issues and are currently slated to run again in 2028.”

It is unclear which “allies” Miller was referencing in his remarks. The United States has consistently defended Israel when the council considered resolutions against it over its ongoing war against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza.

In April, the council adopted a resolution calling for a halt to selling arms and munitions to Israel “to prevent further violations of international humanitarian law and violations and abuses of human rights.”

Twenty-eight council members voted in favor of the resolution, the United States’ members and five others voted against it, and 13 abstained.

Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva at the time, said the resolution was further evidence of the council’s anti-Israel bias.

“According to this resolution, States should not sell arms to Israel in its endeavor to defend its population, but they continue to arm Hamas,” she said in a U.N. statement issued on April 5.

The United States rejoined the council when the Biden administration took office in 2021, after the Trump administration pulled out in mid-2018 over what it termed an excessive negative focus on Israel.

The Trump administration had denounced the council’s membership, which included some of the world’s worst human rights abusers: China, Cuba, Eritrea, Russia, and Venezuela.

In February 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration would reverse Trump’s withdrawal, although he acknowledged that the council needed “reform” of its agenda, membership, and “its disproportionate focus on Israel.”

Blinken said that the withdrawal “did nothing to encourage meaningful change, but instead created a vacuum of U.S. leadership, which countries with authoritarian agendas have used to their advantage.”

“To address the council’s deficiencies and ensure it lives up to its mandate, the United States must be at the table using the full weight of our diplomatic leadership,” he said at the time.

The U.N. Human Rights Council was created in 2006 to replace a human rights commission discredited because of some members’ poor rights records. But the new council soon faced similar criticism, including that rights abusers won seats to protect themselves and their allies.

Cathy He and The Associated Press contributed to this report.