My Take | Nikki Haley is an odious hypocrite on rights
The outgoing American ambassador to the United Nations has been described as a “moderate”. But during her tenure, she stuck knives into several vital organs of the international body
When Nikki Haley, the outgoing US ambassador to the United Nations, announced her resignation, The New York Times, as did many other mainstream American publications, described her as a “moderate” and her tenure at the UN as a success.
That was a truly Orwellian moment in mainstream American media. Haley herself is, as she likes to accuse others, “straight out of George Orwell”. In 1984, the fearsome leader was called Big Brother; Haley could be Big Sister.
Among many American and international pundits, she is often contrasted with US National Security Adviser John Bolton, who was also a UN ambassador, under George W Bush, but who once said: “The [UN] Secretariat building in New York has 38 storeys. If it lost 10 storeys, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
Actually, both are extremists, only that one is almost unhinged while the other more level-headed. It would be hard to find a UN ambassador who has done more to undermine the UN as a global institution, and international consensus and cooperation, than Haley.
She denounced the UN’s educational, science, and cultural organisation (Unesco), the UN Human Rights Council and the UN’s New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, and then withdrew from them all. She defended the Donald Trump White House over forcibly separating children from parents who tried to enter the United States illegally.