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In August, President Donald Trump’s administration abruptly withdrew from the United Nations’ signature human rights process: the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). While this move didn’t make headlines in domestic media, it should have. The UPR offers an opportunity for all countries to take stock of their voluntary efforts to promote human rights in a periodic report to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. It is an important mechanism that the United States helped to establish and has long backed, including when other states have threatened to withdraw from it.

With world leaders now gathering in New York for the annual UN General Assembly, this decision takes on new meaning. As the host nation, the United States holds an outsized leadership role and has—at least rhetorically—been supportive of the United Nations’ mission over the years. While pulling out of the UPR process may, at first, seem consistent with Trump’s “America First” agenda, the reality is that this withdrawal is not only bad for U.S. democracy and human thriving at home, but it also undermines U.S. interests and influence abroad. The United States had already pulled out of the UNHRC earlier this year. Autocratic regimes are now moving swiftly in a scramble for global influence to fill the vacuum left by Trump’s continued retreat.

To be sure, the United States has never been entirely consistent in its prioritization of human rights, which often took a back seat to other geopolitical concerns. However, these rights were at least carefully considered as diplomats crafted U.S. foreign policy. Although inspired to a certain degree by idealism, advancing human rights has also been motivated by pure self-interest as well. Experience shows that protecting and advancing human rights globally leads to greater stability and prosperity, opens markets for U.S. businesses, protects Americans abroad, and reduces migration pressures on those who might otherwise flee oppression or poverty. Furthermore, countries that respect human rights are better geopolitical allies and trading partners and do not resort to war to resolve disputes.

As Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and other experts have noted, the suppression of human rights is closely linked to hunger, poverty, instability, migration, terrorism, warfare, and economic decline—all of which have direct consequences for Americans. Weakening the international human rights framework will only undermine U.S. national security and economic interests. As a result, no matter the political affiliation, U.S. presidents have supported human rights as a core component of American foreign policy. This wasn’t only because it was the right thing to do, but because it was the smart thing to do.

Since the United Nations’ founding, the United States has remained an influential leader at the world body and has contributed to its record on human rights. Eleanor Roosevelt, the United States’ longest-serving First Lady, chaired the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in February 1947, and the United States has weighed in on every major UN decision as one of only five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The promotion of human rights and the effort to sustain international peace and security was always—at least in principle if not always in practice—inextricably linked to the primary purposes of the United Nations and the United States’ involvement since the organization’s founding in 1945.

The UDHR inspired the establishment of the UN Human Rights Commission, which was responsible for operationalizing and institutionalizing these human rights ideals. Since the original commission was reformed and rebranded in 2006, today’s Human Rights Council has adopted more than 1,400 resolutions, established 38 fact-finding missions or commissions, and served as a bulwark to protect human rights during humanity’s darkest hours. While the Council has been (sometimes fairly) criticized for perceived political bias, its very existence provides hope and a space for civil society and survivors to seek a more just world.

This brings us to the UPR, a primary tool in the UNHRC’s toolkit. By requiring every UN member state to undergo a periodic peer review of their human rights record, the process provides consistent monitoring of states and offers an opportunity for civil society organizations to provide input and recommendations on how countries can improve their human rights records. Since its creation, all UN members—including the United States, until last month—have participated in the three parts of the UPR: each country produces a report, participates in an open hearing with other states, and makes commitments to improve their human rights record. The process has produced hundreds of recommendations for member states to protect and advance human rights.

It’s evident that the system works. Empirical research shows that 76 percent of these recommendations have later been adopted by participating states. While not binding, these recommendations establish norms that shape how governments behave and strengthen other international accountability and monitoring efforts that reduce human rights abuses. Until now, the United States has participated in each review session, including during Trump’s first term [PDF], in which the administration reiterated a commitment to the previously widely accepted belief that “leadership in the field of human rights is by example.”

The Trump administration’s abrupt and unprecedented UPR withdrawal now calls into question the United States’ commitment to that principle and the whole edifice of human rights. It dangerously emboldens dictators abroad and undermines national security and prosperity at home. Just as attacks on our own domestic system of checks and balances, independent media, and universities threaten the rule of law at home, the administration’s attacks on—and disengagement from—the UPR undermines the rule of law globally. The UPR, in many respects, represents an easy target, as many Americans do not fully appreciate the important role that the UN human rights system plays. Unfortunately, there is a direct line between the lack of understanding of the value of U.S. foreign aid in stabilizing the world and American interests globally, and the quick and near total decimation of foreign assistance by the White House.

To put it plainly, the U.S. UPR boycott dims a shining spotlight on human rights protections for people around the world by suggesting that the United States views itself as exempt from any form of international monitoring. Through this decision, the United States undermines the legitimacy of the UNHRC, provides cover for other countries to violate the human rights of their people and avoid scrutiny, and enables greater repression and human suffering. Perhaps that’s the point.

While dodging scrutiny of its own record, the Trump administration has not foregone criticizing human rights abuses in other countries—albeit on a selective and politicized basis. But such criticism is more persuasive when the United States leads by example through its continued participation in the UPR and other UN human rights mechanisms, maintaining some semblance of credibility and universality.

We call on future leaders to rejoin the UPR process and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to human rights. American leadership on the international stage is good for both our country and the world. The UPR is an essential mechanism that allows the international community to reinforce democratic norms, protect fundamental rights, and build a more prosperous future—not only for far-flung communities around the world, but for Americans’ human rights at home.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the authors. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.