The US ambassador to the United Nations has confirmed the United States is reconsidering its involvement in the United Nations' top human rights monitor.
Nikki Haley says the Human Rights Council risks losing its credibility unless it eliminates what the United States sees as chronic bias against one of its main allies, Israel.
Addressing the Council for the first time at its 35th session in Switzerland, Ms Haley says the attention given to Israel is disproportionate.
"Being a member of this council is a privilege, and no country who is a human-rights violator should be allowed a seat at the table. Finally, it's hard to accept that this council has never considered a resolution on Venezuela, and yet it adopted five biased resolutions in March against a single country, Israel. It is essential that this council address its chronic anti-Israel bias if it is to have any credibility."
Nikki Haley says the United States is not seeking to leave the Council but sees several areas needing what she calls "significant strengthening."
She says that includes greater transparency in how the 47 member states are elected.
And she says the Council's permanent agenda item "Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories" should be removed.
"There is no legitimate human-rights reason for this agenda item to exist. It is the central flaw that turns the Human Rights Council from an organisation that can be a force for universal good into an organisation that is overwhelmed by political agenda. Since its creation, the Council has passed more than 70 resolutions targeting Israel. It has passed just seven on Iran. This relentless, pathological campaign against a country that actually has a strong human rights record makes a mockery not of Israel, but of the Council itself."
Israel ended its working relationship with the Human Rights Council in 2013.
Four years earlier, the United States had ended a three-year boycott of the body.
The Council has taken a strong position against Israel's continuing control of Palestinian territory captured in 1967, particularly growing Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The United Nations regards the policy as a breach of international law.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, addressed it in his speech to the Geneva gathering.
"The Holocaust was so monstrous and so mathematically planned and executed, it has no parallel, no modern equal. Yet it is also undeniable that, today, the Palestinian people mark a half-century of deep suffering under an occupation imposed by military force, an occupation which has denied the Palestinians -- many of them -- most fundamental freedoms and has often been brutal in the way it has been realised, an occupation whose violations of international law have been systematic and have been condemned time and again by virtually all states."
Nikki Haley has called for the Council to adopt strong resolutions on alleged abuses in Syria, Eritrea, Belarus, Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of Congo at its current session.
But some human rights groups say the United States should also turn its attention to matters at home.
Simon Adams is executive director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, a non-governmental organisation based in New York.
"Nikki Haley has certainly expressed an interest, and I think a genuine interest, in human rights. And in many ways, her behaviour in New York and now in Geneva has been fairly consistent, in terms of raising human-rights issues. In terms of the Trump administration, I think there's obviously an immense hypocrisy in, while at the same time talking about a Muslim ban and at the same time all the sorts of crackdowns on rights, or the weakening of rights, in the United States, we see them, of course, going to Geneva and lecturing the Human Rights Council on who should and should not be on it."
Dr Adams says the US focus on the Council's treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not undermine some of its other concerns, though.
"In terms of some of the other issues, there is a case to be made that there are issues of credibility, and, of course, the predecessor to the Human Rights Council in Geneva collapsed and had to be reformed -- and by 'reformed,' I mean completely done away with -- because it basically ended up being a mockery of a Human Rights Commission, on which serial human-rights abusers tried to get themselves on it in order to protect themselves and protect their friends from any kind of international scrutiny. I don't think that's true of the Human Rights Council."
He suggests it would be huge mistake if the United States left the Council.
