MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-06-07 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] US envoy Haley berates UN rights council,
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US envoy Haley berates UN rights council, demands reforms
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/nation-world/article154544659.html
GENEVA
U.S. President Donald Trump's ambassador to the United Nations on
Tuesday berated the U.N.'s top human rights body, calling it a "forum
for politics, hypocrisy and evasion" that allows rights abusers to
whitewash their images and foes of Israel to criticize the Jewish state
unfairly.
Nikki Haley, in the first visit to the Human Rights Council by America's
top diplomat at the U.N., trained most of her focus on alleged abuses by
Venezuela's government, a relatively easy target in that President
Nicolas Maduro has increasingly run afoul of some of his Latin American
neighbors.
Haley made only a passing reference to poor human rights in Saudi
Arabia, a longtime U.S. ally that recently agreed to buy hundreds of
billions of dollars' worth of U.S.-made weapons over the next decade.
Many of the weapons could be used in the Saudi-led fight against rebels
in impoverished, war-wracked Yemen.
After brief comments to the Human Rights Council, Haley used an academic
forum in Geneva to pinpoint two reforms sought by the United States: the
use of competitive elections to choose the council's 47 members and
removal of Israel as a permanent fixture on its agenda — the only
country in the world that is.
"Countries like Venezuela, Cuba, China, Burundi and Saudi Arabia occupy
positions that obligate them to, in the words of the resolution that
created the Human Rights Council, 'uphold the highest standards' of
human rights," she said, alluding to some member countries. "They
clearly do not uphold those highest standards."
Haley also dangled the possibility that the U.S. could quit the council.
"In case after case, it has been a forum for politics, hypocrisy and
evasion, not the forum for conscience that its founders envisioned," she
said at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. "If it fails to change, then
we must pursue the advancement of human rights outside the council."
"America does not seek to leave the Human Rights Council; we seek to
re-establish the council's legitimacy," she said. "The United States
will not sit quietly while this body, supposedly dedicated to human
rights, continues to damage the cause of human rights."
To make her case in the side event, Haley drew extensively from an
Associated Press report in October that described the desperate medical
saga of 3-year-old Ashley Pacheco, who nearly died from a staphylococcus
infection in Venezuela's shattered medical system.
Haley noted Venezuela lacks medical supplies, including antibiotics
needed to fight Ashley's infection, and cited the frenzied search for
treatment by the girl's parents. They finally got the antibiotic, only
after another child destined for it had died.
"Ashley eventually got out of the hospital ... she is one of the lucky
ones. She lived," Haley said. "Others are not so lucky. In the last
year, 11,500 babies died before their first birthday in Venezuela.
Maternal mortality is up 65 percent."
Her tough words about Venezuela didn't come without a response.
Two silent protesters in the audience held up sheets of paper during her
Graduate Institute address, one with the words "Fake Leadership" on it —
an apparent critique of the Trump administration and an allusion to the
president's repeated jibes about "fake news."
The American Civil Liberties Union responded by calling on the United
States to "practice what it preaches" on human rights. The ACLU, in a
statement, urged the United States to make human rights a priority at
home, and then it could "begin to credibly demand the same of other
countries abroad."
"It's hard to take Ambassador Haley seriously on U.S. support for human
rights in light of Trump administration actions like the Muslim ban and
immigration crackdowns."
Venezuela's ambassador in Geneva also struck back tartly with a "right
of reply" under council rules.
The ambassador, Jorge Valero, denounced "the pathetic intervention from
the ambassador of the North American empire this morning."
"What's unbelievable is that the United States empire — which has
massacred entire nations with its preventable war and which practices
torture against people arbitrarily held within illegal facilities —
would declare itself against any nation," Valero said.
The harsh words came at the start of the council's June session — the
second of three held each year. Earlier, U.N. human rights chief Zeid
Ra'ad al-Hussein gave a wide-ranging speech that denounced suffering of
both Palestinians and Jews, and called for greater access for rights
experts to investigate alleged crimes in countries worldwide.
Haley called on the council to adopt "the strongest possible resolutions
on the critical human rights situations in Syria, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Belarus and Ukraine, and that it follow
up to prevent further human rights violations and abuses in those
countries."
Rights advocates say key stakes in this session include a possible
resolution about Congo and the release of a U.N. human rights office
review on how the council's recommendations on Israel and the
Palestinian territories have been applied since 2009.
Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks
about the current humanitarian situation in the world, during the
opening of the 35th session of the Human Rights Council, at the European
headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, June
6, 2017. Keystone via AP Magali Girardin
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