Walking away from the Human Rights Council leaves a void that will be filled
The United States again leaves the only multilateral venue dedicated to addressing human rights abuses, allowing bad actors to set the terms.
By Michèle Taylor
“If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
I repeated these words countless times in late 2021 while meeting with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as I sought confirmation to lead the United States back onto the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) as our ambassador. Last week, Donald Trump again abandoned the council, removing the United States from even observer status. This reckless retreat is an enormous setback for our country, our values, and our standing on the global stage.
The United States has chosen different levels of engagement with the council since its creation from the ill-fated Human Rights Commission in 2006: at times as voting members and at times not at all. The body is far from perfect, but it is the only multilateral venue dedicated to addressing human rights among states; were we to try and create something else today, it would likely be far worse than what we have.
The concerns I heard about the HRC during my confirmation were legitimate. There is a bias against Israel and some states with appalling human rights records have used membership on the HRC to deflect from their own very real violations of international human rights law and standards.
But through the experiment of principled disengagement in protest of these challenges, e.g., vacating our seat at the table in 2018 when Trump pulled us out of our position as one of 47 voting member states, we have learned what the consequences are of ceding that space.
On the menu are American values, the very core of democracy and justice, and the notions of what constitute human rights and to whom they apply. As agreed on more than 76 years ago when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, human rights are inalienable and belong to individuals. But there are countries whose understanding of these rights have shifted. China and others have sought to change the norms under which we all operate to apply these rights to communities rather than individuals.
We lost a lot of ground when the United States wasn’t there to defend our position and China and its allies determinedly introduced language into accepted texts that nefariously worked to alter our universal understanding and put at risk the rights and lives of countless vulnerable people across the globe. My team and I spent the past three years reestablishing U.S. credibility on human rights and as a leading voice on the global stage while building important coalitions that promote values we hold dear as a nation.
Make no mistake; those values are under attack.
Antisemitism is on the rise everywhere. At the HRC, the United States took the leading role in countering this oldest form of hate. We went far beyond condemning antisemitism; we educated member states on its dangers, mobilized allies, and spearheaded initiatives. By the end of my time in Geneva, we launched the first-ever coalition of nations within the U.N. system dedicated to fighting antisemitism through action. Walking away now means abandoning that leadership. It sends a dangerous message: that the United States will not stand firm when Jewish communities worldwide most need defenders. All forms of discrimination are interconnected, and hate begets hate. Without American leadership, what will happen to this initiative? Likely nothing.
No country is above scrutiny; all nations should be held to the same standard. Yet at the HRC, Israel has been uniquely and unfairly targeted. When the United States was present, we led the charge to defend Israel against bias, pushed back on the council’s disproportionate focus, challenge efforts to delegitimize our ally, and removed barriers that discredited the HRC, making it challenging for the council to express any legitimate concern. We did more than protest unfair treatment; we built coalitions to counter one-sided resolutions, condemned antisemitism in international fora, and successfully weakened damaging narratives. In our absence, an open-ended Commission of Inquiry (COI) against Israel was established. It is an unprecedented, biased mechanism with no expiration date, created without the United States there to influence it. Its members have shown terrible bias and, in the case of at least one, naked antisemitism. On rejoining the HRC, we successfully led two joint statements pointing out the unjust and unprecedented nature of the COI. The strong U.S. voice at the council and in negotiations would most certainly have led to the adoption of a very different text, something we saw play out through our negotiations on recent Israel-related texts. Though we strictly opposed the final versions and called for a vote, encouraging others to join us in voting no, the adopted text was far better than where it started. We don’t have to be a voting member to be actively engaged in the standards and outcomes of the council, but we do have to be present. When I arrived in Geneva, Israel was still engaging. Now, the United States has walked away again, and Israel has followed suit, robbing the council of their leadership on important issues such as cyber bullying.
Aside from the bias against Israel, one of the most persistent concerns about the HRC is its membership. Bad actors such as China, Venezuela, and Russia have sought to use their seats to shield themselves from scrutiny. But when the United States is engaged, we do more than just call out hypocrisy. We take action. We led the effort to suspend Russia from the council after its brutal further invasion of Ukraine. We helped shift the balance of votes to favor countries with stronger human rights records, leading to Russia and Venezuela losing their bids for reelection. We countered Iran’s influence, condemned Nicaragua’s repression, and directly challenged China’s attempts to rewrite international human rights norms. By staying in the fight, we weakened authoritarian influence and held abusers accountable.
Now, with Trump’s latest withdrawal, we are ceding ground again. Those who do not share our values, repress their own people, and undermine democracy will fill the void. And history tells us exactly what that looks like. Make no mistake, China and its closest allies understand the importance of the council and use the platform to set international standards and create mechanisms that increasingly undermine U.S. global interests.
We are engaged in a competition for the system that will prevail in an increasingly connected world, ours or China’s, and we are walking away from a critical battlefield.
When Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed in 2024 that when we’re not at the table we’re on the menu, he was describing the importance of multilateralism over all.
Trump’s decision to walk away yet again has left a void that will be filled. And we know from history that it will be filled in ways that are antithetical to what America stands for. We are sending the message that we can’t be relied upon to uphold the universal standards that many Americans have fought for since our founding. So whose standards will win out?
The United States is always at its strongest when we lead with our values. We cannot afford to abandon them. The fights for human rights and democracy don’t pause when we step away. They just get harder to win.
Michèle Taylor was the U.S. ambassador and permanent representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council from 2022 to 2025. She was previously a member of the boards of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she served on the Committee on State Sponsored Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial and the Committee on Conscience.
The premise of Michele Taylor's well-argued piece is that “US values” are ones that all Americans share. That is apparently not the case. Human rights are most certainly not considered important by Trump and his gang of oligarchs and MAGA cult members. So for Trump to pull out of the HRC is an expression of his values, and they do not include human rights.
This is a terrific piece by someone who has aggressively defended U.S. interests in a challenging multilateral setting. When the U.S. isn’t present, China and Russia win.