UN official slams GOP as shutdown delays US human-rights review

{mosads}The comments come as officials and editorials around the world continue to warn of the negative fallout for America’s reputation from the shutdown and the looming default.

“No one should mistake the fact that the shutdown is damaging to the State Department today and destructive to our country’s foreign policy today, and the costs grow every day that goes by,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at her briefing Tuesday. “Having just returned from a long trip that the secretary was on, we can say with great confidence that this has a tremendous impact on how we’re perceived abroad as well, and it undermines our efforts to promote democratic reforms and economic growth and all of the important issues that the secretary was focused on overseas.”

Jamil Dakwar, director of the Human Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the administration’s inability to appear before the Human Rights Commission an “international embarrassment.”

“The government shutdown is not only hurting many Americans — especially vulnerable communities from Native Americans to low-income families who depend on federal government support and services — it’s also causing international embarrassment as the U.S. fails to appear before a major U.N. human rights body.” 

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