Download Locations

• Open CRS (User submitted)
• WikiLeaks

Summary

On March 15, 2006, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution replacing the Commission on Human Rights with a new Human Rights Council (the Council). The U.N. Secretariat and some governments, including the United States, view the establishment of the Council as a key component of comprehensive U.N. reform. The Council was designed to be an improvement over the Commission, which was widely criticized for the composition of its membership when perceived human rights abusers were elected as members. The General Assembly resolution creating the Council, among other things, increases the number of meetings per year, reduces the number of Council seats from 53 to 47, and introduces a "universal periodic review" process to assess each Member State's fulfillment of its human rights obligations. One hundred seventy countries voted in favor of the resolution to create the Council. The United States was one of four countries to vote against the resolution, stating that the Council was no better than the Commission and that it lacked mechanisms for "maintaining credible membership." The Administration initially stated that it would fund and support the work of the Council. During the Council's first two years, however, the United States expressed concern with the Council's focus on Israel and lack of attention to other human rights situations. On April 8, 2008, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, stated that the United States would withhold a portion of its contributions to the 2008 U.N. regular budget equivalent to the U.S. share of the Human Rights Council budget. On June 6, 2008, the Administration further announced that the United States would engage with the Council "only in matters of deep national interest." The United States has not run for a seat in any of the three Council elections and is currently a Council observer with no voting rights. Since its establishment, the Council has held eight regular sessions and seven special sessions. The regular sessions addressed a combination of specific human rights abuses and procedural and structural issues. Four of the seven special sessions addressed the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Lebanon. Other Special Sessions have addressed the human rights situation in Darfur, Sudan (December 2006), the human rights situation in Myanmar (Burma) (October 2007), and the right to food and the world food crisis (May 2008). Congress maintains an ongoing interest in the credibility and effectiveness of the Council in the context of both human rights and broader U.N. reform. In Divisions J, the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriation Act, 2008, of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 (P.L. 110161), for example, Congress prohibits U.S. contributions to support the Human Rights Council unless (1) the Secretary of State certifies to the Committees on Appropriations that funding the Council is "in the national interest of the United States" or (2) the United States is a member of the Council. Due to the nature of U.N. budget mechanisms, withholding Council funds would be a largely symbolic gesture and may have little or no effect on the Council's operational work. This report will be updated as events warrant.

XML