UN chief regrets as US exits 'biased' Human Rights Council
United Nations, June 20 : United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regretted the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), said his spokesman on Tuesday.
"The Secretary-General would have much preferred for the United States to remain in the Human Rights Council," reported Xinhua news agency quoting spokesman Stephane Dujarric as saying in a note to correspondents.
"The UN's human rights architecture plays a very important role in the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide," the note read.
Earlier, announcing the country's withdrawal from the UNHRC, US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley described the body as "hypocritical and self-serving" and one that "makes a mockery of human rights".
According to a BBC report, Haley last year accused the council of "chronic anti-Israel bias" and said the US was reviewing its membership.
Formed in 2006, the council has been criticised for allowing countries with questionable human rights records to be members.
The move comes amid intense criticism over the Trump administration's policy of separating child migrants from their parents at the US-Mexico border.
UN human rights chief Zeid bin Ra'ad has called the policy "unconscionable".
The New York-based Human Rights Watch also condemned separation of families, and called President Trump's human rights policy "one-dimensional".
Reacting to the US' exit from the global rights body, Ra'ad said in Geneva that the US withdrawal is "disappointing, if not really surprising."
"Given the state of human rights in today's world, the US should be stepping up, not stepping back," Zeid said.
Haley announced the US intention to quit the council at a joint news conference with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
She called the council a "cesspool of political bias", but stressed: "I want to make it crystal clear that this step is not a retreat from our human rights commitments."
Last year, she told the Council it was "hard to accept" that resolutions had been passed against Israel yet none had been considered for Venezuela, which at the time saw dozens of protesters killed during political turmoil.
Israel is the only country that is subject to a permanent standing agenda item, meaning its treatment of the Palestinians is regularly scrutinised.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
