John Bolton Announces Trump Admin Will Re-Up Attack on United Nations and Defund Human Rights Agencies

Published on

Friday, August 24, 2018

by

Common Dreams

"We are going to de-fund the Human Rights Council," Bolton tells AP.

by

Andrea Germanos, staff writer

 10 Comments

President Donald Trump's national security adviser John Bolton, seen here in 2017, told the Associated Press on Thursday that the administration would "de-fund the Human Rights Council" and cut off funds for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. (Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/cc)

The Trump administration issued another attack on the United Nations, with John Bolton, President Donald Trump's hawkish national security adviser, announcing it plans to cut off funding to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Human Rights Council, with other U.N. agencies being potential future targets.

According to one observer, the plan to starve the "Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights suggests U.S. hostility to U.N. human rights protection is not really, or only, about flaws with the Council as it has previously claimed."

Matt Pollard@mattdpollard

 · Aug 24, 2018

US plan to cut funding for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights suggests US hostility to UN human rights protection is not really, or only, about flaws with the Council as it has previously claimed. https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/iranian-presence-syria-tap-key-us-russia-meeting-57350712 …

Bolton presses Russia about meddling in US election process

President Donald Trump's national security adviser said Thursday he pressed top Russian officials about meddling in the U.S. election process, while saying Russians will face no new U.S. sanctions if...

abcnews.go.com

Matt Pollard@mattdpollard

Office of the High Commissioner is independent of the Council, appointed by the UN Secretary General, and indeed a new Commissioner is to take office within days.

12:49 PM - Aug 24, 2018

The U.S. announced in June its decision to leave the 47-member Human Rights Council over its alleged anti-Israel bias, which prompted Amnesty International to say that Trump was again "showing his complete disregard for the fundamental rights and freedoms the U.S. claims to uphold."

In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, Bolton said, "We are going to de-fund the Human Rights Council."

The U.S. is the U.N.'s biggest donor, providing about 22 percent of its funds.

Bolton said the administration would "calculate 22 percent of the Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner's budget, and our remittances to the U.N. for this budget year will be less 22 percent of those costs—and we'll say specifically that's what we're doing."

Unsurprisingly, the move drew immediate praise from Israel.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License