U.S. diplomats walked out as their French counterparts were speaking on the United Nations on Monday after America’s close European ally criticized the Trump administration’s human rights record.
The surprise move during a U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine followed U.S. opposition to giving U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk one other four-year term. The reappointment on Friday got overwhelming support, including from France.
The U.S. walkout reflects not only the more strained relations between President Donald Trump and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, but additionally wider tensions between the U.S. and Europe. These include questions over Trump’s commitment to NATO, possible changes to U.S. troop deployments in Europe, and Trump’s desire to regulate Greenland, which belongs to NATO member Denmark.
Trump has complained that Europeans, who weren’t consulted, didn’t help the U.S. in the course of the Iran war. Amid the tensions, Macron has taken a lead in trying to accumulate Europe’s military and ensure a nuclear umbrella as one in every of the continent’s two nuclear powers, together with Britain.
After Monday’s transient walkout, deputy U.S. ambassador Dan Negrea accused France of feigning “moral outrage” and pretending to lecture the world about every topic, including human rights.
The USA has stood by France in every conflict where its “freedom has been imperiled” and tolerated its grandstanding “out of a way of camaraderie and mutual respect,” he said, but no more.
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What sparked the walkout was a social media post Friday from France’s U.N. Mission in Geneva criticizing U.S. opposition to a second term for the U.N. rights chief. The General Assembly voted 144-10 with 13 abstentions in support of Türk, with the U.S. among the many “no” votes.
“The U.S. was a beacon of human rights. Not anymore. Today, it stands alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali & Russia, isolated. And the world not listens to it,” the French Mission tweeted.
Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., in responding on X, accused France of coddling ”a number of the worst human rights abusers” and voting “for somebody who has been lecturing, free, sovereign democracies like the USA, the U.K., and Israel, while cozying as much as the world’s worst oppressors.”
Türk’s job because the U.N. rights chief, by its nature, is hard: It requires speaking out against rights violations by the governments of the countries that make up the membership of the world body.
As an illustration, Türk has sharply criticized Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza in addition to having urged a “massive rethink” of U.S. immigration policy before the World Cup, citing issues around “racial profiling, surveillance and immigration enforcement.”
At Monday’s meeting, Negrea drilled in on France.
“Today, I remind them that it’s the USA that is still the beacon of liberty for the world,” he said. “As such, we won’t be affording them the advantage of listening to their politicized drivel until they surrender their condescending and disrespectful rhetoric and behave in a fashion commensurate with their seat on this council.”
France’s U.N. Ambassador Jerome Bonnafont never mentioned the walkout when asked to take the ground at the tip of the council meeting to reply.
As an alternative, he noted that France — which helped the USA gain its independence — took part within the July 4 celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.
“The United Nations was created with the goal of working towards international peace and security, human rights and development,” he said. “All of that forms the spirit during which France works inside the United Nations … to preserve this institution, its independence, its ability to act in service of the charter and act to serve human rights and peace.”
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