Avoiding Defeat on Human Rights

Commentary: The decision not to seek a seat on the Human Rights Council indicates how far U.S. credibility has fallen at the United Nations

By Jeffrey Laurenti
April 7, 2006

After the Bush administration’s multiple failures to forge common policy with its allies and developing countries at the United Nations on Iraq, nuclear proliferation, human rights, and UN reform, it has at last made a strategically sound decision: the United States will not run for a seat on the UN’s newly constituted Human Rights Council.
The administration’s decision wisely acknowledges that the president’s personal representative to the UN, conservative firebrand John Bolton, cannot win an election for the United States in the General Assembly—not even in the Western group. Rather than face a humiliating defeat at the hands of Portugal or Greece, the administration will not seek a seat for the United States at all.
While politically realistic, the decision not to run constitutes a damning admission that the administration’s belligerent policies have squandered America ’s global leadership. The one-time leader of the Free World and the planet’s pioneering constitutional democracy cannot muster half the votes in an assembly where democracies now constitute the majority.
Administration policies have blighted America’s traditional reputation as a leader on human rights. A government forfeits that mantle when it countenances torture, on graphic display at Abu Ghraib; secretly renders Muslim-surnamed individuals to torturers among Arab secret police; refuses to permit UN rights monitors to see detainees at Guantanamo who have been imprisoned for years but not accounted for; and refuses to compel states to honor consular obligations to foreign nationals accused of capital crimes.
Even with the heavy burden of its arch-conservative policies, the United States could still salvage a majority vote if it had serious diplomatic representation at the United Nations that practiced the politics of coalition-building rather than polarization. We can sustain coalitions if our representatives act as if they believe that the United States shares the aspirations of most of humankind for peace and security, disarmament, improved living standards, and a sustainable environment.
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