Let’s Say Goodbye to the U.N.’s Useless “Human Rights Council”

The New York Times may well have signaled the next corporate media outrage cycle with its recent article lamenting the supposedly disastrous consequences for “human rights” stemming from President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council earlier this year and slash funding for the U.N. overall. In fact, the story should be a source of encouragement to all lovers of freedom, as the U.N. has done precious little to stop blatant human rights abuses by authoritarian nations while targeting democratic countries for taking legitimate protective actions.

As the Times relays, “diplomats from around the world” who met at a posh Swiss resort earlier this year are now worried about the consequences “if the United Nations cut funding for human rights investigations” as a result of Trump’s “threat” to “slash American funding.” But what good have those investigations done for American taxpayers (or the rest of the world for that matter) in the first place?

Even though oppressive dictatorships like China, Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela have been found to be blatantly violating human rights, the fact is that the U.N. has no capacity to halt their abuses. The most it can do is utter ineffectual tut-tuts.

Meanwhile, however, the U.N.’s so-called Human Rights Council (HRC) has long functioned as an extremely partisan body. As just one example, a majority of its resolutions (99 and counting) since it was founded to replace the Commission on Human Rights in 2006 (following complaints about that body’s bias) have been directed against the Middle East’s only democracy, the state of Israel.