America at the Human Rights Council

The United States stint before the UN's Human Rights Council last Friday has been all over the news recently (at least the news I read). David Bosco of the other multilateralist and Colum Lynch of Turtle Bay both present good analysis, but I thought I'd quickly review the situation for anyone who might have been distracted recently as well as throw in my own two cents.

Under President Obama's administration the United States has for the first time ever joined the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) which requires its members to submit a report on their adherence to international standards on human rights every 4 years, a practice known as the Universal Periodic Review. The US submission can be found: Here. After submitting the written report (and this is the fun part) representatives from other countries get to publicly question the US about it. Two minutes per country. A number of US adversaries (Iran, Venizualia, Cuba, and North Korea) actually camped out as if they were waiting for the next generation of iPhone, in order to get first speaking rights. Cuba won the right to go first, and those countries proceeded in providing a heavily critical of US policy.

In his article Bosco brings up some good points, framing it as "smart public relations" and reminding his readers that in exchange for being subjected to this interrogation the United States will be able to interrogate other regimes in turn, and that some of them have much more to worry about. He is right as far as it goes but he misses  something else: that the antagonistic opening speeches likely muted further criticism of US policy. After all, who wants to be on a list with with North Korea and Cuba?  And by all accounts the rest of the proceedings were fairly restrained, offering a mix of light criticism and praise. It makes it a lot harder to make a tackle a controversial subject like war crimes when you'll be lumped in together with those countries. I imagine it'd feel similar to how we in the US feel whenever someone starts listing off the countries that execute minors. That's not a good list to be on.