Press Releases

06/20/2018

A short-sighted and disappointing decision by the Trump administration

Questionable support for dictators (Press Release)

It is a shame that the United States are now leaving the stage of global human rights issues. Picture: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0

According to the German human rights organization Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), it is a disappointing and short-sighted decision that the United States will leave the United Nations Human Rights Council. “This is a major setback for international human rights work. If the US leave the council, authoritarian states and dictatorships will gain influence within the UN,” stated Ulrich Delius, the STP’s director, in Göttingen on Wednesday. The US justified the decision with the way the council deals with the State of Israel.

“Nowadays, human rights work is extremely complex and multi-faceted, and it is maddening that the US are planning to abandon this important body – allegedly because of the dealings with a single state, but actually for reasons of domestic policy – giving up important opportunities to make progress regarding human rights concerns on a global scale,” Delius stated, emphasizing that this is just another spectacular move in the scope of Trump’s politics of isolationism. According to the STP, it is a shame that the United States are now leaving the stage of global human rights issues. The work of the Human Rights Council is at times unsatisfactory and one-sided – however, in order to change this, the field should not be left to autocrats and dictators. Delius stressed that, despite all the criticism, the Human Rights Council had provided important impetus for resolutions regarding human rights crises in Burma, South Sudan, Eritrea, North Korea, and other states.

Header Picture: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons