Taking the UNHRC to Task

July 5, 2017

by: Ilse Posselt, Bridges for Peace

Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) has made it a point to deal with inequities toward Israel at the UN. In May she penned an open letter in the Washington Post in which she took the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to task for its anti-Israel bias and unfair judgments against the Jewish state.

“The council must end its practice of wrongly singling out Israel for criticism,” Haley wrote. “When the council passes more than 70 resolutions against Israel, a country with a strong human rights record, and just seven resolutions against Iran, a country with an abysmal human rights record, you know something is seriously wrong.”

This was followed by a visit to address the council in Geneva, Switzerland, the first US Ambassador to the UN to do so.

Haley said that Washington might withdraw from the council unless the body agrees to a number of reforms. These reforms, she explained, include ceasing its “anti-Israel bias.”

Israel is the only fixed item on the council’s agenda. Since its establishment in 1996, the UNHRC has condemned Israel more often than any of the 192 UN states. Over the past 21 years, the council has leveled a whopping 78 criticisms and decisions against the only democracy in the Middle East. In comparison, the council felt that Syria deserved 29 resolutions, North Korea nine and Iran a mere seven. Moreover, to date the UNHRC has made no mention of human rights violations against Saudi Arabia or China.

The UN’s blatant bias against the Jewish state has been hauled into the international spotlight on a number of occasions since Haley’s appointment as the US ambassador to the world body in January 2017. Over the past five months she has earned a reputation as a staunch supporter of the Jewish state and has made a number of public speeches and declarations regarding the UN’s bias treatment towards Israel.

Photo Credit: U.S. Embassy Jerusalem/flickr.com