On Oct. 6, 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council rejected a resolution to hold a debate on China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang. The vote was spurred by a meticulous report published five weeks earlier by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which detailed Chinese state-directed persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities and concluded that such violations “may constitute … crimes against humanity.”
The resolution—which failed by 19 votes to 17, with 11 abstentions—represented the first formal attempt at the Human Rights Council to hold China accountable for its massive and ongoing human rights abuses.
The council’s failure to carry out its most basic function as the premier U.N. venue for the promotion and protection of human rights stands as an indictment of the council itself—and the human rights system it purports to anchor. It also demonstrates the deep success of China’s
