(Image source from: Fox News)

The United States ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Thursday wording the Human Rights Council as the United Nations "greatest failure", claimed that the institution has rendered cover for the world's most barbarous regimes as she defended the Trump administration's conclusion to draw back from it.

The U.S. in the month of June withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council, saying America will not take lectures from hypocritical institutions and convicting its "shameless hypocrisy" in exonerating offenders through tranquility and incorrectly condemning those committing no wrongdoing.

In her remarks at a top American think-tank 'The Heritage Foundation', the Indian-American U.S. Ambassador to the UN alleged that "more often, the Human Rights Council has provided cover, not condemnation, for the world's most inhumane regimes. It has been a bully pulpit for human rights violators." Alleging that Human Rights Council has been, not a place of conscience, but a place of politics, Haley said the UN body has focused its attention unfairly and relentlessly on Israel. Meanwhile, it has ignored the misery inflicted by regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and China, she said. "Judged by how far it has fallen short of its promise, the Human Rights Council is the United Nations' greatest failure," Haley said.

"It has taken the idea of human dignity - the idea that is at the center of our national creed and the birthright of every human being - and it has reduced it to just another instrument of international politics. And that is a great tragedy," Haley said, noting that she did not come to this conclusion happily, or lightly. "Many of our friends urged us to stay for the sake of the institution. The United States, they said, provided the last shred of credibility the Council had. But that was precisely why we withdrew," she said. The right to speak freely, to associate and worship freely; to determine one's own future; to be equal before the law - these are sacred rights, she asserted. "We take these rights seriously - too seriously to allow them to be cheapened by an institution - especially one that calls itself the Human Rights Council," she said.

Haley said to this day, asserting that none should make fault of equating membership in the Human Rights Council with the assist for human rights, the U.S. does more for human rights than any other country and the U.S. will proceed to do that. "We just won't do it inside a Council that consistently fails the cause of human rights," she said.

Haley said America's back down from the Human Rights Council does not mean that it has given up its fight for reform. "On the contrary, any country willing to work with us to reshape the Council need only ask. Fixing the institutional flaws of the Human Rights Council was, is, and will remain one of the biggest priorities at the UN," she added.

By Sowmya Sangam