Two months after President Donald Trump announced an American commitment to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Washington influences his work by applying pressure publicly and behind the scenes, said seven diplomats and rights.
The United States has left its headquarters in a six-week session of the council of 47 members ending on Friday, but its lobbying and its pressure have had some success, sources told Reuters.
They declared that the United States, which accused the council of an anti-Israeli bias, had focused on the deactivation of a Pakistan proposal on the creation of an international, impartial and independent mechanism (IIIM), the most rigorous UN type of investigation, on the actions of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The version of the Pakistan proposal which was adopted Wednesday by the Council, whose mission is to promote and protect human rights in the world, has not included the creation of IIIM.
The Council already has a commission of inquiry into the Palestinian territories, but Pakistan’s proposal would have created an additional investigation with additional powers to collect evidence of possible use in international courts.
A letter of March 31 sent by Brian Mast, president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chamber of the United States, and James R Risch, president of the senatorial committee of foreign relations, warned against the vote of the proposal.
“Any member state of the HRC or UN entity which supports a specific IIM in Israel … will be confronted with the same consequences as the ICC has been confronted,” said the letter.
He seemed to refer to the sanctions approved by the House of Representatives of the International Criminal Court in protest against his mandates against the Israeli Prime Minister and former Minister of Defense on the Israel campaign in Gaza.
The final version of the Pakistan proposal only referred to an invitation to the United Nations General Assembly to consider an IIIM in the future.
Two Diplomats based in Geneva said they had received messages from American diplomats before the change of label asking them to oppose the new investigation. “They said,” Back on this question, “said one of them, who spoke under the guise of anonymity.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said that he was complying with the executive decree signed by Trump on February 4 by removing the United States from the Council and would not participate, adding: “In politics, we do not start private diplomatic conversations.”
“The United States seems to try to have them in both directions. He does not want to pay or participate in the UN, but he still wants to lead him,” said Lucy McKernan, Deputy Director of the United Nations at the Geneva Bureau of Human Rights Watch.
‘Raw power’
The United States and Israel are not members of the Council, but, like all the member states of the United Nations, have an informal observer status and a seat in the meeting chamber of the Council.
International human rights institutions are now at a critical time, said Phil Lynch, director of the International Human Rights Service, a non -governmental organization.
“We are potentially confronted with a future characterized by anarchy and raw power,” he said.
The United States was once the best donor of the United Nations Rights System, but Trump said that the UN was “not well managed” and that the assistance cuts had forced.
The United States and Israel also opposed the mandate of one of the independent experts in the Council during this session.
The Israeli ambassador declared on March 24 that Francesca Albanese, critic of Israeli actions in Gaza, had violated a code of conduct of the United Nations by “anti -Semitic behavior and flagrant discourse”, showed a diplomatic note.
The spokesman for the US State Department said that Albanese was “unfit for his role”.
“The correspondence received is under study,” said the council spokesman Pascal Sim, adding that each time the council is appointing, “he does so knowing that the mandate holder should fulfill up to six years in this function.”
The internal organization which guarantees that UN experts respect a condemned conduct code which he described as a campaign coordinated against the Albanians, according to a letter from the Coordination Committee for Special Procedures of March 28.
He found no evidence in support of the complaints of Israel against the Albanians. However, he introduces directive social networks for United Nations experts in the light of certain concerns raised concerning his X messages.
