US quits 'biased' UN human rights council | Hacker News Reader

US quits 'biased' UN human rights council

bbc.co.uk

60 pointsdrexlspivey30 comments

Incredible how much damage a single individual can do to the world. So much for checks-and-balances, I've seen people argue over and over again that no matter what the 'checks and balances' will straighten things out and will prevent the worst. The United States is losing stature in the world day by day and with at least another 2.5 years of this madness ahead there is no telling how bad things are going to get.

I'm certainly not counting on anybody suddenly growing a backbone and setting some limits, if that were to happen you would expect it to have happened by now.

This is people "growing a backbone and setting some limits". The system has actually held better than I expected.

There'd be even less damage if Clinton, Bush, and Obama hadn't progressively neutered Congress (and if Congress hadn't progressively become useless). I hope (somewhat unrealistically) that Congress will look at the current situation and try to reverse some of the damage of the last two or three decades...

There are already checks and balances. Unfortunately Congress and a sizeable portion of the public are with him. He is not a dictator, he legitimately won the election and I can see good support for him on my Facebook "friends"

Not to compare the two, but Adolf Hitler also got into power pretty much legitimately. He was elected, and the Enabling Act of 1933 that gave him the power to enact laws passed Reichstag and Reichsrat and was signed by the president.

You can reach dictatorship in legal ways. Being abolished may be seen as an inherent design feature of democracies.

I'm not a Hitler expert, but I didn't know he was elected. What position did he get elected to prior to the Enabling Act giving the Nazis power? Is it comparable to being elected President in the US?

He lost the presidential election, but was then appointed chancellor by Hindenburg after the Nazis won most of the government through the electoral process. Chancellor of Germany is roughly equivalent to president of the US (Angela Merkel is chancellor). After that civil liberties were revoked.

So he was not elected, but he was legally appointed and as a result of overwhelming electoral victories by his party. Just another example of the non-equivalence of “legal” and “moral” in all cases.

It is a salient point as a response to the post: There are already checks and balances. Unfortunately Congress and a sizeable portion of the public are with him. He is not a dictator, he legitimately won the election and I can see good support for him on my Facebook "friends"

The failure of government to stand up to a dangerous and deranged populist is relevant IMO. When that populist then leads the government, it’s time to at least be concerned. I doubt that Trump is worthy of direct comparison to Hitler beyond that point, but I’m also glad that I don’t live in the US right now!

    > Is it comparable to being elected President in the US?

You'll get a decent idea of the situation by reading up on the Reichstag fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

> The United States is losing stature in the world day by day

As a foreigner looking in for five decades I'd say that the post-Vietnam US stature was cyclical; generally positive but with the ability to surprise in a negative manner ( Panama and Grenada being two examples ), though such incidents were usually brief and forgiven like rare tantrums.

But that has changed; the current downturn is unusually deep and sustained, dating back to 2001. There has been no amelioration in image since then, it has been a steady decline and each subsequent global action has lost the element of surprise. The USA now conjures images of drone strikes, paramilitary police and unilateralism. Withdrawing from the HRC barely moves the needle.

The UN is a great example of why you can’t have democratic institutions where the constituents have fundamentally different values. Saudi was recently the head of the HRC: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/28/why-o...

Yeah this strikes me as similar to bill naming. I call the bill "Protect Children Act" -- Now anyone who votes 'no' must be against protecting children regardless of what the bill says. Most people can't be bothered to actually read the bill.

I can't honestly say either way if this human rights council is something we should be members of or not, but leaving sure makes for bad press.

There is value in naming such countries to head up the HRC as well, it focuses the spotlight on them and hopefully - not necessarily - forces them to at least try to live up to some standards.

The US withdrawing from the HRC basically says 'we do not care about human rights' to the world. As if the last couple of days of imagery from the Southern border would require any further explanation.

Disagree. It just as easily could say "we do not think that your council actually does anything useful about human rights".

>The US withdrawing from the HRC basically says 'we do not care about human rights' to the world.

Similarly, voting against the PATRIOT Act basically says 'we do not care about patriotism' to the country.

This fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the UN. It's not supposed to be a democratic institution; the founders knew that if it were, a lot of really awful world leaders wouldn't bother showing up. It's supposed to be one where everyone has a spot at the table, the theory being that it is better in the long run if there is an official channel for dialogue between all countries. If the UN ever became a purely democratic organization, a bunch of countries would leave and never come back, to the considerable detriment of worldwide peace.

You may not like it, but that's what the goal has always been.

Is the UN supposed to be a democratic institution? That was never my impression. I thought the point was that, no matter what else was happening in the world, we're all generally better off if the leadership of various countries have a standing body where they are basically forced to talk to each other all the time.

The UN is not supposed to be a democratic institution. I'm speculating about the dangers of world government.

People are pointing the finger at Saudi Arabia on the Council, but the US perpetrated torture in the Bush administration.

The difference is that we brought the torturers to justice, they were tried and convicted and we swore never to do that again.

Just kidding, we did none of the above and the person who ran the torture program is now the head of the CIA.

Aaaaah! You got me!

The US and it's relations with the UN were a focus of one of my senior seminars in History (1995). I'm a programmer, not a political scientist or attorney, so read this critically. In short:

* The UN Human Rights Council declares specific Human Rights. Countries choose to accept them or not.

* The US has a Constitution which defines specific limitations on the power of government. Rather than granting rights, there are limitations placed on what government can do. The Bill of Rights amends the Constitution to describe specific rights in some cases granted to citizens and specific limitations that the federal government has when dealing with citizens.

There's a fundamental disconnect in "governments grant these rights to people" versus "people inherently have rights and these are the curbs we put around them." An even bigger impediment is that the UN HRC would supersede the US Congress: these changes to the US Constitution and laws would be imposed without a treaty or legislative input. A committee in an extra-national organization (which has a history of, at times, not working well with the United States) would be imposing regulations on the US. Imagine one of our hard-working Congressmen abrogating power in favor of declarations from a UN committee.

For the UN HRC to have any impact on the United States, we'd need to amend our Constitution to grant power to an international organization, or establish a treaty to implement its recommendations. Importantly, we'd need to change the fundamental concept by which citizens have power and rights and government is restricted. (And I'm ignoring _Gibbons v. Ogden_ (1824) and the expansion of the Interstate Commerce Clause and Federal regulation throughout the 20th century.)

I'm disturbed how "human rights" somehow equates to mandatory acceptance of geo-political agendas.

I'm even more disturbed that ""hypocritical and self-serving" and "makes a mockery of human rights"" is now a place called home.

Sad how has changed the Country that represents democracy and freedom, the first great democracy of modern era.

It's version 1.26 of this republic. Perhaps, a la française, we should look to a newer version. (France claims to be on version 5).

Constitutional convention anyone?

The USA are a republic, not a democracy. The founding fathers expressed repeatedly their utter revulsion for democracy as a political system, and by design created a non-democratic republic -- one designed to limit the powers of the State and the influence of mobs in order to better secure our natural rights.

There is the old adage of 'better to be in the tent peeing out as opposed to being outside peeing in.'

This action feels better described as 'taking a dump on the tent while blaming the tent'

Well, if it's Trump's position that countries which egregiously violate human rights shouldn't be on the council... I guess this is a good start?

It's certainly an opportune time for the US to leave the human rights council. Right as we're in the middle of our own human rights crisis due to the growing insanity of the Trump admin.

I used to be an independent having voted for both Republicans and Democrats. I have given up on the Republicans (Trump, Cruz, Ryan). I will vote non-Republican up and down the ballot.

Hopefully, the policies will be reversible.

I’ll be interested to see how independents behave in the mid-terms.

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