On May 3, the United States lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission. So last week the House voted to withhold $244 million in U.N. payments unless it’s returned next year.
Lawmakers are upset at losing the seat by secret ballot and have tied the elimination of that procedure with the payments, as well. According to the rhetoric, the U.S. will no longer be able to make a stand for “principled” positions on the commission.
It seems the rest of the world has decoded the true meaning of “principled” positions and would rather see Sweden, France, and Austria—the three countries chosen over the United States—on the commission. And why not?
Rather than being a stalwart advocate of human rights everywhere, the U.S. has used its position on the UNHRC, in typical superpower style, to achieve self-serving aims that have little to do with upholding human rights overseas or at home. To the U.S., the only human rights issues that need to be stringently addressed are the abuses that take place in countries such as China and Cuba, countries with which the U.S. is at economic and ideological war.
Issues such as the 1997 treaty to ban land mines or the support of affordable AIDS drugs to devastated countries are routinely dismissed while the U.S. ignores flagrant abuses in states such as Israel and even goes out of the way to block U.N. resolutions when they are against strategic allies.
According to the 2001 World Report from Human Rights Watch, Israel has expanded its use of tanks and helicopter gunships in Palestinian residential areas, restricted freedom of movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, subjected Palestinians passing through checkpoints to harassment, physical abuse, and torture by soldiers and police, detained Palestinians for long periods without charge or trial and “according to the nongovernmental Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI), the General Security Service (GSS) continued to employ interrogation techniques including beatings, sleep deprivation, prolonged periods handcuffed to chairs, placing detainees with ‘collaborators’ who beat, tortured, and threatened them to obtain confessions; and long periods of incommunicado detention.”
While the United States has looked the other way to protect its strategic allies from U.N. scrutiny, it has also turned a blind eye at home.
Incarceration
of individuals in the United States reached 690 inmates per 100,000
residents at the end of 1999, according to the latest U.S. Department
of Justice figures. Human
Rights Watch ranks this as the highest in the world behind Rwanda. And that incarceration is grossly skewed according to race. African Americans, who make up roughly 12 percent of the
national population account for 46.5 percent of state prisoners
and 40 percent in federal prison, according to HRW. Department of Justice figures for 1999 estimated 9.4 percent
of black men versus 1 percent of white men in their late twenties
were in prison. And
overcrowding took place in twenty-two states and in the federal
prison system. Inside,
male prisoners were subjected to sexual assault and abuse from other
inmates.
Beyond
incarceration, the use of the death penalty—President George
W. Bush, himself, oversaw 145 executions while governor of Texas—is
disproportionately used against minority groups. According to a U.S. Department of Justice study, “80
percent of federal defendants who faced capital charges, and 74
percent of convicted defendants for whom prosecutors recommended
the death penalty, were members of minorities.”
And since
1976, thirty-five mentally retarded individuals have been executed,
while roughly two to three hundred more wait on death row. According to HRW, “The
United States appears to be the only democracy whose laws expressly
permit the execution of persons with this severe mental disability.”
"Send
the world a message,” said Dick Armey, R-Texas, as he and other
lawmakers called to extort a UNHRC seat from the international community.
A message
does need to be sent, one in line with what Tom Malinowski of Human
Rights Watch said, "The United States should take the process
of multilateral democracy more seriously."
It
is time for the United States to pay up and become part of the international
community, and to start acting unabashedly on matters of human rights
rather than like the big bully on the block. The U.S. can start by adhering to the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights at home.
In the meantime, the western countries will be represented by Sweden, France, and Austria on the UNHRC. These three countries will do their job and may even benefit from a lack of obstruction typical of U.S. actions in the U.N.
* This piece appeared in the Colorado Daily (May 16, 2001).