Since taking office a year ago, the Trump administration has been working hard to undermine the United Nations, especially the UN’s efforts to uphold universal human rights. Now US President Donald Trump wants to create a new organisation, a “Board of Peace” with himself as lifetime chairman.  While many countries were invited, those signing up appear to be a rogues’ gallery of leaders and governments with human rights records ranging from questionable to appalling.

The United States played a central role in establishing the UN in 1945 to prevent a repeat of the crimes against humanity and genocide during World War II. Ever wary of perceived threats to its autonomy, the US has always had a love-hate relationship with the UN. But the Trump administration has emphasised the hate and dispensed with the love, denouncing what it perceives as “anti-American” and “hostile agendas.”

The administration has disregarded and defunded dozens of lifesaving UN programs. It has also withheld much of the  assessed contributions, which member states are obligated to pay. The administration has pulled out of the UN World Health Organization, UN climate bodies, and international climate agreements, and stopped funding the UN population fund, which supports and protects women and girls in armed conflicts and crisis zones.

US negotiators have pushed Trump’s ideological agenda in UN negotiations, demanding the removal of selected human rights language from resolutions and........

© Al Jazeera