Russian Foreign Ministry comments on US exit from US Human Rights Council

"China advocates and commits itself to safeguarding multilateralism, and supports the UN Human Rights Council and other mechanisms to work together for the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide, Geng said".

Bolton, a former ambassador to the U.N. during President George W. Bush's administration, said that the United States is self-governing, and that it does not need the advice of the United Nations or other worldwide bodies on how to do so.

Bolton said the decision to withdraw was made by Trump "weeks ago" and followed a long review of the Human Rights Council's performance.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley slammed rights groups on Wednesday for thwarting Washington's attempts to reform the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council and said they had contributed to the Trump administration's decision to withdraw. "The Human Rights Council has become an exercise in shameless hypocrisy, with numerous world's worst human-rights abuses going ignored and some of the world's most serious offenders sitting on the council itself", Pompeo reveals. "The world's most inhumane regimes continue to escape scrutiny, and the council continues politicizing and scapegoating of countries with positive human rights records in an attempt to distract from the abusers in their ranks".

Human Rights Watch U.N. director Louis Charbonneau said the USA draft General Assembly resolution "could have backfired badly and the process could have been hijacked" by the countries seeking to undermine the Human Rights Council. "You put yourself on the side of Russian Federation and China, and opposite the United States, on a key human rights issue", Haley wrote. The Human Rights Council enables abuses by absolving wrongdoers through silence and falsely condemning those who have committed no offense.

Vice President Mike Pence also publicly backed the move.