The Trump administration will not nominate anyone to serve on a United Nations committee on racism, the latest sign of a U.S. retreat from international bodies and traditional human rights priorities.
A State Department official said the White House intervened to prevent the expected renomination of a human rights lawyer chosen by former President Obama for the 18-member U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
The official said it cements the narrative that “the Americans just don’t care about these kinds of things anymore.”
State Department officials originally thought the administration would renominate Gay McDougall, the current U.S. member of the committee, a so-called “treaty body” that oversees the implementation of a 1960s international convention on “the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination.”
The committee typically meets three times per year in Geneva to oversee progress toward that goal by nations party to the convention.
The move comes at a time when President Trump’s views about race have faced intense criticism, with some prominent Democrats flatly stating that the president is “a racist.”
State Department officials had assured McDougall that she would be renominated.
But White House officials nixed the idea days later, people familiar with the matter said.
McDougall has spoken critically of Trump in the past, warning that his campaign rhetoric could endanger minorities around the world, but it’s not clear whether the White House was aware of those statements.
Some U.S. officials suspect the reason is that she had been tapped for the post by Obama.
The Trump administration has generally sought to push out appointees of the former Democratic president.
The Trump administration has from the start looked warily at international bodies and agreements, including anything affiliated with the United Nations.
Trump decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
The administration also quit the U.N. Human Rights Council, saying it was too critical of Israel and that its membership included too many abusive states.
Top Trump aides have also fiercely condemned the International Criminal Court, particularly after the court’s chief prosecutor called for an investigation into alleged human rights abuses by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Members of the U.N.’s anti-racism committee must be nominated and then elected to one of 18 slots. Its members are meant to be independent experts on the issue, not political operatives.
American candidates have typically been shoo-ins, and McDougall would have stood a strong chance of keeping her seat during this year’s June 21 vote for nine of the seats.
She has expertise on international human rights and in recent years has focused in particular on China’s mistreatment of its Uighur Muslim population.
McDougall has about nine months left on her current four-year term, which she intends to finish.