06/04/2013 00:00
TW
0

by MONITOR
IN the immediate order of things it may not seem the most important action for the US government to announce, but yesterday's news that it plans to rejoin the United Nations' Human Rights Council is a clear indication of the way in which Barack Obama's promise to change the way Washington works is being delivered. America quit the Council during the Bush presidency on the grounds that it ignored the poor human rights record of many Third World countries while concentrating on Israel's violations. That complaint was justified to some extent but the act of walking away from the Council was quite wrong and counter-productive.

Earlier this week Susan Rice, the new US Ambassador at the UN, said that President Obama believed that the way to improve the Council's record was to work from within it rather than by remaining “outside the tent”. Mr Bush's distancing was once endorsed by his UN Ambassador, John Bolton, with the comment, “You don't show up at every ragtag little organisation that comes into existence.” There is no doubt that the UN's Human Rights Council needs a wider perspective than its present membership permits. The United States will have to lobby hard to get votes to enable it to rejoin the Council but the effort will be worth while because, as Ambassador Rice said this week, “This body should be a key forum for advancing human rights.”