U.S. Relents: Agrees to Support New Human Rights Council

After being one of four countries to vote against the new Human Rights Council, the U.S. has announced that it will cooperate and even support funding for the new council. If that’s the case, I’m not exactly sure what was the point of U.S. opposition in the first place

In any event, as I’ve suggested, the new Human Rights Council has very little formal legal authority (kind of like the General Assembly itself). Still, the Human Rights Council has become a potent symbol in the United States of the legitimacy of the U.N. itself. By approving a less than ideal Human Rights Council (as even most of its supporters concede), the supporters also guarantee that the Human Rights Council will serve as a useful whipping boy for anti-U.N. sentiment in the U.S.