UNCHARTED TERRITORY

Trump Admin Ends Cooperation With U.N. on Potential Human-Rights Abuse in the U.S.

No longer working with investigators over potential violations inside America.

The Trump administration is no longer cooperating with United Nations human-rights investigators on potential violations occurring inside America, The Guardian reports. The State Department is said to have stopped responding to official complaints from U.N. special rapporteurs—a group of experts who act as global watchdogs on issues such as poverty, migration, and justice. At least 13 requests have gone unanswered, according to the report, and there’s been no response to any formal query since May. The Trump administration hasn’t invited any U.N. monitors to visit the U.S. to investigate human rights since Trump’s term began—the only two U.N. experts who have made fact-finding visits were initially invited by Barack Obama. “They are sending a very dangerous message to other countries: that if you don’t cooperate with U.N. experts, they will just go away,” said Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s human-rights program. “That’s a serious setback to the system created after World War II to ensure that domestic human-rights violations could no longer be seen as an internal matter.”