Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s human rights program, said the shift gave the impression the US was no longer serious about honoring its own human rights obligations. That’s a serious setback to the system created after World War II to ensure that domestic human rights violations could no longer be seen as an internal matter,” Dakwar said. The US backs those mandates “that have proven effective in illuminating the most grave human rights environments, including in Iran and DPRK [North Korea]”, he said. “In the absence of an official visit, we cannot publish a country report to be presented to the UN human rights council,” he said. “This suggests the US has abandoned even the most rudimentary forms of human rights accountability, and a whittling away of access to justice for those in the US whose human rights may have been violated,” Farha said.

Source: The Guardian January 04, 2019 06:00 UTC