The UN Human Rights Council will be releasing a report on the US human rights conditions. Several statistics were revealed to the press on Thursday, suggesting growing social inequality in the country. US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has blasted the report as "misleading and politically motivated". CGTN's Ma Ke has more.  

UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston expressed his bewilderment at the US decision to withdraw from the Human Rights Council.

PHILIP ALSTON UN RAPPORTEUR ON HUMAN RIGHTS "Of 47 governments, only one has chosen to say this council is hopeless and that we're leaving."

Alston is the author of a report on human rights in the US. He says in the past 25 years, the wealth of the richest 1% Americans has been multiplying, while that of the rest 99% dropped. And the gap is widening.

PHILIP ALSTON UN RAPPORTEUR ON HUMAN RIGHTS "There were already in 2016, 40 million Americans living in poverty and 18 million of those living in extreme poverty."

The report also indicates that life will be harder for the poorest 20% with Trump administration's tax and social welfare policies taking effect. US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley wrote a scathing letter in response. She told the UN that the council is deflecting attention from the world's worst human rights abusers and focusing instead on the wealthiest and freest country in the world. Analysts are calling her reaction hypocritical.

BRIAN BAKER US POLITICAL ANALYST "The US has a terrible record of double-standard. I would say hypocrisy when it comes to HR while the friends of the US or its allies, or the US itself, they say nothing about human rights."

Among widening wealth disparity, worsening gun violence, the anti-Muslim campaign and the widely-condemned zero tolerance immigration policy, the Trump administration is taking the country deeper into unilateralism. Critics also fault its reason for quitting, what it claims is the council's anti-Israel bias.

The UN rapporteur will be presenting his report to the Human Rights Council on Friday, laying out his key findings to its 46 members and to an empty chair where the US has traditionally sat.