Speaking to the Heritage Foundation on July 18, 2018 about the decision of the United States to withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council, Ambassador Nikki Haley said the following:
"The United Nations was founded for a noble purpose – to promote peace and security based on justice, equal rights, and the self-determination of people. But it has many member nations whose leaders completely reject that purpose. When that happens, many well-meaning countries adopt a position of neutrality in the hope of coming to an agreement with these nations. They effectively allow dictatorships and authoritarian regimes to control the agenda.
Resolutions get watered down until they are meaningless – or they become objectively anti-democratic. Moral clarity becomes a casualty of the need to placate tyrants, all in the name of building consensus.
In such a situation it is imperative for the United States to use the power of our voice to defend our values. That's as true today as it was during the Cold War – maybe even more so.
We are a special nation with a special message for the world. We are a country founded on human dignity; on the revolutionary idea that all men are created equal with rights including, but not limited to, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you take this truth seriously – as Ambassador Kirkpatrick did, as I do – it is non-negotiable. You don't sell out to appease those who deny it. And it's not a political chit to be traded for something of greater value.
If you take it seriously, you use your voice. You fight for it, even if that means you fight alone.
The United States was instrumental in creating the United Nations Human Rights Commission precisely because we believe in the inherent dignity of all women and men. It was meant to be, in the words of its first chairman, Eleanor Roosevelt, "a place of conscience." When it has served this function, the Human Rights Council, as it is now known, has provided a voice for the voiceless. It has brought the injustice suffered by political prisoners to international attention. It has put a spotlight on crimes committed by Syria's Assad and the Kim dictatorship in North Korea.
But these have been the exceptions, not the rule.
More often, the Human Rights Council has provided cover, not condemnation, for the world's most inhumane regimes. It has been a bully pulpit for human rights violators. And the Human Rights Council has been, not a place of conscience, but a place of politics. It has focused its attention unfairly and relentlessly on Israel. Meanwhile, it has ignored the misery inflicted by regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and China.
Judged by how far it has fallen short of its promise, the Human Rights Council is the United Nations' greatest failure. It has taken the idea of human dignity – the idea that is at the center of our national creed and the birthright of every human being – and it has reduced it to just another instrument of international politics. And that is a great tragedy. I don't come to this conclusion happily, or lightly.
The Obama Administration decided to join the supposedly "reformed" Human Rights Council in 2009. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed that the United States could improve the Council by working from the inside.
By the time I became the U.S. Ambassador eight years later, it was clear that this strategy had failed. There are lots of problems with the Human Rights Council, but two stuck out for me when I came to the UN.
The first was the Council's membership. When I arrived, and still today, its members included some of the worst human rights violators. The dictatorships of Cuba, China and Venezuela all have seats on the Council. Not only was Venezuela a member, but in 2015 the Council invited its dictator, Nicholas Maduro, to speak to a special assembly.
He got a standing ovation, which was not surprising given that 62 percent of the Human Rights Council's members were not democracies.
The other major sign that the United States' presence had failed to improve the Council was the continuing existence of the notorious Agenda Item Seven.
This is the permanent part of the Human Rights Council agenda that is devoted exclusively to Israel. No other country – not Iran, not Syria, not North Korea – has an agenda item devoted solely to it. Agenda Item Seven is not directed at anything Israel does. It is directed at the very existence of Israel.
It is a blazing red siren signaling the Human Rights Council's political corruption and moral bankruptcy...
On June 19th, Secretary Pompeo and I made an announcement that the United States was withdrawing from the Human Rights Council. Many of our friends urged us to stay for the sake of the institution. The United States, they said, provided the last shred of credibility the Council had.
But that was precisely why we withdrew.
The right to speak freely, to associate and worship freely; to determine your own future; to be equal before the law – these are sacred rights. We take these rights seriously – too seriously to allow them to be cheapened by an institution – especially one that calls itself the "Human Rights Council."
No one should make the mistake of equating membership in the Human Rights Council with the support for human rights. To this day, the United States does more for human rights, both inside the UN and around the world, than any other country. And we will continue to do that. We just won't do it inside a Council that consistently fails the cause of human rights..."