


The United States will not participate in the next United Nations-administered peer review of its human rights records, the latest move in the nation’s withdrawal from the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Each member nation of the U.N. Human Rights Council undergoes the Universal Periodic Review every 4 1/2 years to detail the steps it has taken to improve human rights conditions in its country and to receive feedback from other member nations on how to improve their human rights conditions.
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February to withdraw the U.S. from the Human Rights Council, mirroring his withdrawal from the council during his first term in 2018.
A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner in a statement that participating in UPRs “implies endorsement of the Council’s mandate and activities and ignores its persistent failure to condemn the most egregious human rights violators.” The spokesperson pointed to China and Cuba, both Human Rights Council member states, as violators that the council protects.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights shared a letter from the United States Mission in Geneva with the President of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday, according to Human Rights Council spokesman Pascal Sim. The letter indicated “that the United States will not participate in its fourth Universal Periodic Review scheduled on 7 November 2025 in Geneva,” Sim said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
The U.S. participated in three cycles of UPRs after they first began in 2008, last completing one in November 2020, and only opted in to the periodic review under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
“The U.N.’s unrelenting bias against Israel, feigned care for human rights with known human rights abusers, and the politicization of human rights across the U.N. system have tarnished the UPR process,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “We will no longer be complicit with efforts that perpetuate this reality.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly argued that the Human Rights Council “has protected human rights abusers” and contains an anti-Israel bias. When Trump first pulled out of the council in 2018, the administration said the council serves as “a megaphone for unfair bias against Israel.”
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The president and four vice presidents of the Human Rights Council will discuss the U.S. withdrawal from its fourth UPR “at its earliest convenience,” Sim told the Washington Examiner. “This is a matter for the 47 member states of the Human Rights Council to consider at a later stage.”
The United Nations first created the Human Rights Council in 2006, but the Bush administration, like the Trump administration, did not opt in as a member.