Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar attends a joint press conference with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani (not pictured), in Rome, Italy, 14 January 2025;
Credit: Reuters/Guglielmo Mangiapane/File Photo
JERUSALEM/GENEVA (Reuters) - Israel has told the United Nations Human Rights Council that it is disengaging from the body, alleging it was biased, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Thursday 6 February 2025.
Council members have frequently raised allegations of Israeli human rights violations in the Gaza war, while a UN inquiry it set up found last year that the immense scale of killings amounted to a crime against humanity.
Israel rejected the finding and says it takes care to avoid civilian casualties. It has long criticised the Geneva-based body and has disengaged in the past.
In a letter to UNHRC President Jorg Lauber, Saar said: "The decision was reached in light of the ongoing and unrelenting institutional bias against Israel in the Human Rights Council, which has been persistent since its inception in 2006."
The United States, Israel's close ally, withdrew from the council on Tuesday 4 February 2025.
The Israeli move drew disapproval from a UN rights expert, although Israel is not one of the council's 47 voting members and did not always attend meetings.
While the council has no legally binding power, its debates carry political weight and scrutiny can raise global pressure on governments to change course.
Sometimes, investigations mandated by the council can lead to prosecutions for war crimes in international courts.
"The Human Rights Council has been a biased body since its beginning, where dictatorships lecture democracies on human rights," Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Daniel Meron, told reporters.
"Israel remains committed to human rights and will engage through credible, non politicised mechanisms," he added.
He said the move was not coordinated with Washington and probably would have happened irrespective of the US withdrawal.
