US walks out on France at UN meeting to protest ally’s criticism of America’s human rights record

The surprise move during a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine followed US opposition to giving UN human rights chief Volker Türk another four-year term. The reappointment on Friday got overwhelming support, including from France. The US walkout reflects not only the more strained relations between President Donald Trump and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, but also wider tensions between the US and Europe.

These include questions over Trump’s commitment to NATO, possible changes to US troop deployments in Europe, and Trump’s desire to control Greenland, which belongs to NATO member Denmark. Trump has complained that Europeans, who weren’t consulted, did not help the US during the Iran war. Amid the tensions, Macron has taken a lead in trying to build up Europe’s military and ensure a nuclear umbrella as one of the continent’s two nuclear powers, along with Britain.

After Monday’s brief walkout, deputy US ambassador Dan Negrea accused France of feigning “moral outrage” and pretending to lecture the world about every topic, including human rights. The United States has stood by France in every conflict where its “freedom has been imperiled” and tolerated its grandstanding “out of a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect,” he said, but no more. “The US used to be a beacon of human rights.

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Not anymore. Today, it stands alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali & Russia, isolated. And the world no longer listens to it,” the French Mission tweeted.

Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, in responding on X, accused France of coddling ”some of the worst human rights abusers” and voting “for someone who has been lecturing, free, sovereign democracies like the United States, the UK, and Israel, while cozying up to the world’s worst oppressors.” Türk’s job as the UN rights chief, by its nature, is tricky: It requires speaking out against rights violations by the governments of the countries that make up the membership of the world body. For instance, Türk has sharply criticized Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza as well as having urged a “massive rethink” of US immigration policy before the World Cup, citing issues around “racial profiling, surveillance and immigration enforcement.” “Today, I remind them that it is the United States that remains the beacon of liberty for the world,” he said. “As such, we will not be affording them the benefit of listening to their politicized drivel until they renounce their condescending and disrespectful rhetoric and behave in a manner commensurate with their seat on this council.”

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