O paradoxo da política externa de direitos humanos dos EUA no Conselho de Direitos Humanos da ONU (2006-2018)

Abstract

With the end of the Commission on Human Rights due to criticisms about its effectiveness in defending human rights, the HRC emerged in 2006, which accepted the criticisms of its predecessor and tried to become more effective. The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) occupies a large space within the UN, being even the subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly. The US was against the creation of the HRC, under the justification that it was doomed to failure. However, even not agreeing with its creation, the US pledged to cooperate. Finally, in 2009, under the Obama administration, the US became a member of the HRC, remaining until 2018, at the beginning of the Trump administration. This dissertation aims to analyze the US participation in the UN Council of Law (CDH) from 2006 to 2018, dates that represent respectively the beginning of the Council and the departure of the US. From the exceptional behavior of the USA present in the foreign policy of human rights, it is intended to discover what was the main factor for having the support of the USA in the HRC (2006-2018). This research proposed two hypotheses, according to the first hypothesis, the US tends to support proposals launched by democratic countries. Once this hypothesis is confirmed, the next point is to verify such paradoxical behavior. If the hypothesis is found to be false, this implies that, for the US, the level of democratization is not a primary factor for obtaining its support. The second hypothesis would be the content of the resolutions that outline the position of the US, whose expectation is that US support will be co-opted by individual human rights issues to the detriment of socioeconomic rights. This research had found that the level of democratization exerted a considerable influence on US support during its participation in the HRC and that when the US supports democratic states there is a reduction in the paradoxical behavior present in US human rights foreign policy.