The council is not perfect. But it is useful and has provided an important venue for the advancement of human rights. And since the United States joined it has been a demonstrably better institution.
In Bangladesh is illegal to be gay, but the government does support HIV/AIDS interventions that reach out to men who have sex with men.
By coincidence, the Libyan government's "Universal Periodic Review" of its human rights record was scheduled for this week in Geneva.
Later this afternoon, the General Assembly will hold a vote on whether or not to boot Libya from the UN Human Rights Council. Doing so will require a two thirds majority vote of the entire membership of the UN--that's 127 countries. UPDATE: Resolution passes
An examination of the proposed plan of action for the Human Rights Council meeting on Libya tomorrow, and why, ultimately the focus of international efforts has to be the Security Council.
I have just obtained the copy of a draft resolution from the Human Rights Council that strongly condemns the violence in Libya. What is more significant than the substance of the resolution is the broad degree of support it has received.
House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's wants the Obama administration to pull out of the Human Rights Council and de-fund it. Here is why that is a bad idea.
One memo on American intelligence gathering activities at the United Nations, revealed by Wikileaks, suggests a strongly progressive agenda for American engagement at the UN.
A couple of countries with more hostile relations with the USA took the opportunity to score some political points. But most of the conversation was not anything different from the kind of discussion you might find if Harold Koh were to discuss America's human rights record at a town hall meeting in, say, Denver.