(Eagle News)– So far, the Philippines has no plans of withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said on Thursday, June 21.
Roque made the statement after being asked to comment on the United States’ decision to withdraw from the body, which President Rodrigo Duterte has time and again accused of being biased.
“We are also in the UN Human Rights Council. We are not following suit if that’s the question,” Roque said.
He said Duterte, in particular, “has no reaction on what the Americans have decided.”
“You know the President is very careful never to comment on sovereign decisions, in the same way that he does not want other states commenting on sovereign decisions..We leave it at that,” he said.
In announcing the US withdrawal from the body on Tuesday, June 19, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the body “has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias” for “too long.”
US Vice President Mike Pence also accused the body of engaging in “ever more virulent anti-American and anti-Israel invective..”
The UNHRC is composed of 47 member-states within the UN that is supposedly responsible for upholding human rights.