Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

U.S. Rejoins U.N. Human Rights Council

The Obama administration noted a recent reduction in U.N. Human Rights Council actions targeting Israel in defending its decision to rejoin the body.

Paula Schriefer, the deputy assistant secretary for international organizational affairs, outlined on Wednesday what she said were U.S. successes on the council, including the the authorization of special rapporteurs for Syria, Belarus and Iran and commissions of inquiry on a number of other human rights abusers.

Schriefer, speaking to the Brookings Institution, acknowledged continuing problems with the council’s tendency to single out Israel.

“While the biased, Israel-specific agenda unfortunately still exists, we are pleased that there were no resolutions tabled under this agenda item during this session,” she said, referring to the most recent council session in June.

She noted that that the council named members to a special fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements, adding that it arose out of an earlier session’s resolution and was not a new action.

“The United States has made clear its belief that this politicized fact finding mission on Israeli settlements does not advance the cause of peace and will not add useful information to the debate over settlements,” she said.

The Obama administration reversed the Bush administration’s policy of boycotting the body because of its institutional bias against Israel, saying the United States could accomplish more by working within the body to target genuine rights abusers and tamp down anti-Israel actions.

Republican lawmakers have called on the Obama administration to pull out of the body.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.