A former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on Monday called on President Joe Biden not to rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council, accusing the body of making a “mockery of human rights.”
Nikki Haley, who served in the position during the Trump administration, said the council “is 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 wrote in a tweet.
“For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias,” Haley said at the time.
Former President Donald Trump had the previous year lauded the head of the United Nations for moving to reform the international body, saying: “In some cases, states that seek to subvert this institution’s noble aims have hijacked the very systems that are supposed to advance them. For example, it is a massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations that some governments with egregious human rights records sit on the UN Human Rights Council.”
Biden has already moved to rejoin the Paris Accords and the UN’s World Health Organization. During the 2020 campaign, he said he would rejoin the Human Rights Council if he won the election.
“We will rejoin the UN Human Rights Council and work to ensure that body truly lives up to its values,” he said in a blog post in 2019.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The United States cannot rejoin the council until later this year, when the next election takes place.
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