(Geneva) The United States informed the United Nations on Thursday in a letter that they would not take part in the next assessment of their balance sheet in terms of human rights to the United Nations.
“I am writing to inform you that the United States of America will not participate in the universal periodic examination (EPU)”, scheduled for November 7, said the American mission in Geneva in this letter addressed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, and consulted by AFP.
The EPU is an examination to which the 193 United Nations member states must submit every four to five years to establish their balance sheet in respect of human rights.
This decision by Washington follows President Donald Trump’s decree in February, ordering the withdrawal of his country from several UN bodies, notably from the Human Rights Council (CDH).
“As with the other mechanisms of the CDH, participation in EPU implies an approval of the mandate and the activities of the Council and ignores its persistent inability to condemn the authors of the most blatant violations of the rights of the rights,” a head of the State Department, under the cover of anonymity, told AFP.
“Politicization of human rights”
In its letter, the American mission specifies that the EPU system, implemented after the creation of the Human Rights Council in 2006, must be “based on objective and reliable information” and “guarantee equal treatment” of all states.
“However, this is not the case today,” she said, adding that “the United States opposes the politicization of human rights within the United Nations system, as well as the constant partiality of the UN against Israel”.
The American mission also criticizes the United Nations of ignoring human rights violations in China, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, which, according to her, “tarnished the EPU process”.
The spokesman for the Human Rights Council, Pascal Sim, stressed to AFP that “since the creation of the EPU in 2008”, his secretariat “has sometimes received requests for postponement” from these “states” exams like Haiti, Sudan and Ukraine because of the various crises they have crossed.
The Human Rights Council, which meets from September 8 to October 8, will discuss the best way to examine the United States, insisted Mr. Sim.
“The Trump administration’s decision to boycott the EPU places the United States among the worst countries violating human rights,” the US Union for Civil Liberties (ACLU) reacted in a statement transmitted to AFP.
“This approach is a frightening attempt to escape all responsibility, creating a terrible precedent which would only bare dictators and autocrats and would dangerously weaken respect for human rights, both at home and abroad,” she said.
