Two months after President Donald Trump announced the United States commitment to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Washington is influencing his work by applying public pressure and behind the scene, seven diplomats and rights workers said.
The United States left its empty seat for a six -week session of the 47th members that ended on Friday, but their lobbying and pressure had some success, the sources told Reuters.
They said that the United States, who accused the advice of an antiisraeli bias, had focused on dumping a proposal by Pakistan about the creation of an international, impartial and independent mechanism (IIIM), the most rigorous type of UN investigation, on Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The version of the proposal of Pakistan that was approved on Wednesday by the Council, whose mission is to promote and protect human rights worldwide, did not include the creation of the IIIM.
The Council already has an investigation commission on the Palestinian territories, but Pakistan’s proposal would have created additional investigation with additional powers to gather possible use evidence in international courts.
A March 31 letter sent by Brian Mast, president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives., And James R Risch, president of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned the proposal against voting.
“Any HRC Member State or UN entity that supports a specific IIM of Israel … will face the same consequences as the ICC faced,” said the letter.
It seemed to refer to the sanctions approved by the Chamber of Representatives in the International Criminal Court in protest for their arrest orders for the Prime Minister of Israel and the former Minister of Defense on Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
The final version of Pakistan’s proposal referred only to an invitation to the UN General Assembly to consider a IIIM in the future.
Two gin headquarters said they had received messages from US diplomats before the change of writing asking them to oppose the new research. “They were saying: ‘This theme goes back,” said one, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A spokesman for the US Department of State. He said he was complying with the executive order signed by Trump on February 4 withdrawing the United States from the Council and would not participate in it, and added: “As a matter of politics, we do not comment on private diplomatic conversations.”
“The United States seems to be trying to have it both ways. He doesn’t want to pay or participate in the UN, but he still wants to direct it,” said Lucy McKernan, deputy director of the United Nations in the Human Rights Watch Geneva office.
‘Raw power’
The United States and Israel are not members of the Council, but, like all UN Member States, they have an informal observer status and a seat in the Council meetings.
International Human Rights Institutions are now at a critical situation, said Phil Lynch, director of International Human Rights Service, a non -governmental organization.
“We are potentially facing a future characterized by anarchy and raw power,” he said.
The United States was once the main donor of the UN Right System, but Trump has said that the UN “is not well executed” and that the help cuts of its administration have forced scales.
The United States and Israel have also opposed the mandate of one of the independent experts of the Council during this session.
The Israeli ambassador said on March 24 that Francesca Albanese, a criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza, had violated a code of behavior of the UN through “anti -Semitic behavior and flagrant discourse,” showed a diplomatic note.
The spokesman for the United States Department said that Albanese was “not suitable for his role.”
“The correspondence received is in consideration,” said the spokesman of the Pascal Sim Council, adding that every time the Council makes a nomination, “it does so with the knowledge that the owner of the mandate is expected to meet up to six years in this function.”
The internal agency that guarantees that UN experts adhere to a code of conduct condemned what it described as a coordinated campaign against Albanese, according to a letter from the Special Procedures Coordination Committee of March 28.
He found no evidence to support Israel’s complaints against Albanese. However, it is presenting social media guidelines for UN experts in the light of some concerns raised about their X Publications.
