The subject of the meeting was Russia's war against Ukraine. The reason the American delegation left the room was France.
US diplomats walked out of the emergency Security Council session on Monday as France's ambassador, Jerome Bonnafont, took the floor. Bonnafont carried on without acknowledging it, saying France 'was working to preserve the UN's independence and its capacity to act' [1].
Dan Negrea, the alternate US representative, told the Council the walkouts would continue until France renounced its 'condescending and disrespectful rhetoric' [1].
The underlying dispute is about one official. Volker Turk was reappointed as UN human rights chief by the General Assembly, and the vote is the fact that puts the protest in proportion: 144 in favour, 10 against, 13 abstentions [1].
France's UN Mission said the United States was no longer a 'beacon of human rights.' US Ambassador Mike Waltz said Turk had been 'lecturing free, sovereign democracies' [1]. Both are characterisations and neither is checkable.
The vote is checkable. One hundred and forty-four member states voted to keep the official the United States objects to.
What is measurable here is not who is right about Turk. It is that a permanent member of the Security Council has adopted a standing policy of leaving the chamber when another permanent member speaks - and did so first at a session about an ongoing war.
