As President Trump threatened to slash American funding for the United Nations this spring, diplomats from around the world met privately at a lakeside resort in Switzerland to weigh painful spending cuts. One proposal hinted at the potential cost of America’s withdrawal: What if the United Nations cut funding for human rights investigations? The ambassadors of China and Cuba, which have long faced scrutiny over their own rights records, were the ones pushing to limit inquiries into government-sanctioned abuses like torture, war crimes, and jailing of dissidents, according to two diplomats who attended the meeting of the Human Rights Council in May in Switzerland. Over the past few months, those nations, along with others that have a history of imprisoning dissidents like Iran, Russia and Venezuela, have repeatedly suggested scaling back human rights investigations, citing the need to save money, the two diplomats as well as two human rights activists said.