The United States is set Tuesday to become the first country to fully shun a regular review of its human rights record at the UN’s top rights body since it was created two decades ago.
The Trump administration last year pulled the US out of the Human Rights Council, accusing it of an anti-US and anti-Israel bias, and alleging that it didn’t uphold the very values it promotes.
Supporters back the council’s mandate to keep tabs on human rights in all UN member states including the US, which has drawn criticism for its policies including strong-arm deportations and targeted killings of alleged drug-runners in the Caribbean and Pacific — which the administration has said are designed to protect US workers and help keep the country safe.
The Geneva-based council regularly examines the rights records of all 193 UN member states — generally about every four to five years — as part of a process known as the universal periodic review.
The United States, under Trump, already skipped its appointment for its review a year ago. The scheduled November 2025 review was pushed back until Tuesday in hopes that the US government might change its mind.
It did not.
“We give no credibility to the agency,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email to The Associated Press.
“This irredeemable body makes a mockery of human rights through consistent failures to uphold its own ‘values’ as it pushes anti-American rhetoric,” the spokesperson said, alleging the council’s “persistent failure to condemn the most egregious human rights violators.”
The council says the process requires participation of the country in question, and in the case of an absence of any national representatives, the review cannot go forward.
