The UN Human Rights Council meets at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on September 30, 2026. The United States has boycotted its review of human rights for the second year in a row.
Lian Yi/Xinhua via Getty Images
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Lian Yi/Xinhua via Getty Images
GENEVA, Switzerland — The United States left an empty chair at a key U.N. human rights review for the second year in a row, becoming the only U.N. member state to do so.
This review, known as the Universal Periodic Review, is intended to be exactly that: universal. Each State is examined every four to five years by the other Member States. The aim is to ensure that every country, no matter how powerful, undergoes peer review of its human rights record.
In addition to diplomats from the countries under review, civil society groups are also allowed to submit evidence. Several made the trip to Geneva, led by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Jamil Dakwar, human rights director of the ACLU, told reporters that the current U.S. administration continues to “shamelessly” violate human rights, citing its treatment of immigrants, student protesters and the LGBTQ community as examples.
Dakwar said the UN must hold the United States accountable, warning that the Trump administration wants to “dismantle human rights.” In a written response, the State Department noted that Washington had already officially withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, accusing it of “pushing anti-American rhetoric.”
In fact, leaving the Council, which has 47 elected members, does not mean that the United States will be able to easily exit the review process, which is mandatory for all 193 UN member states. Human rights groups see Washington’s position as part of a pattern of disengagement, even active opposition, toward multilateral organizations, pointing to U.S. sanctions against the International Criminal Court and the decision to leave the World Health Organization.
So what happens now? The UN has few sanctions against a country that does not cooperate in the review process. Israel skipped a review in 2013 to protest what it called anti-Israeli bias, but returned nine months later after a UN date was postponed. Until the United States’ no-show today, no country has ever failed to show up twice.
Rights groups would like the UN to conduct a review anyway and collect evidence on alleged violations in the United States. Member states had already drawn up a list of questions for diplomats in Washington, including questions on the use of the death penalty and restrictions on abortion.
But U.N. officials fear that holding the review when there is no one to answer those questions could set a risky precedent. Even authoritarian regimes like North Korea are participating in the review process. If the U.N. allows a review without U.S. participation, it could encourage other member states to stay away as well, leaving rights groups to present their evidence, as one put it, “in a vacuum.”
For now, the UN has decided to postpone delicate deliberations on how to respond until early next year. In the meantime, U.S. citizens cannot resort to a procedure considered a last resort for victims of human rights violations. This is, according to a human rights activist in Geneva, a “crisis of accountability”.
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