The American Civil Liberties Union delivered a harsh rebuke of the Trump administration to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The statement submitted by Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s human rights program, observed that the Trump administration has ignored repeated requests by the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe Gonz?lez Morales, to be allowed to go to the U.S.-Mexican border (in December, for example, Morales requested an investigation into the death of a 7-year-old Guatemalan migrant girl, Jakelin Ame? Caal).
The United States has now allowed 22 requests by U.N. special rapporteurs to go unanswered.
The statement said “the Trump administration has escalated its hostility toward human rights bodies including the apparent severing of relationships with independent experts appointed to monitor and report on human rights violations.”
The ACLU also noted the Trump administration did not deliver routine reports to the U.N. committee on the elimination of racial discrimination or the U.N. committee against torture.
“These issues raise serious concerns regarding the U.S. commitment to human rights and the international rule of law,” the statement said.
The purpose of the statement was to “go on record, to make sure there is a comprehensive assessment of … U.S. lack of cooperation and disengagement with international institutions,” Dakwar told The Washington Post.
A second aim, he said, was to “have the U.S. Congress look into this deterioration, in the United States’ standing and engagement with the most important human rights bodies at the regional and international level.”
He pointed in particular to the new Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The Trump administration pulled the United States out of the Human Rights Council last year. At the time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “its membership includes authoritarian governments with unambiguous and abhorrent human rights records, such as China, Cuba and Venezuela. And the council’s continued and well-documented bias against Israel is unconscionable.”
