Commentary and Newsletters

Anne Bayefsky

The Obama Administration & the “Reformed” UN Human Rights Council: A Human Rights Fraud for Political Ends

Monday, November 22, 2010

The Obama administration joined the UN Human Rights Council in one of its first foreign policy moves. As justification for what it labeled "principled engagement and strategic multilateralism," top administration officials pointed to the Council's new Universal Periodic Review (UPR) system. They called the UPR a "good mechanism" (Brimmer, Assistant Secretary of State) and "an important change" (Koh, State Department, Legal Advisor).

On Friday, November 5, 2010, senior American representatives went to Geneva to participate in the first UPR-review by the Council of the human rights record of the United States.

See for yourselves what the Obama administration foreign policy looks like in action: a human rights fraud for political ends.



Watch video here.
The United States and the UN Human Rights Council

November 5, 2010, UN Human Rights Council, Geneva, Switzerland