Susie
11-17-2006, 06:38 AM
for your info
http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol4/v4n08hrts.html
The U.S. promotes itself as the world’s foremost proponent of human rights but often objects to scrutiny of its own practices.
The U.S. has failed to ratify many key international human rights treaties and covenants.
Those treaties it has ratified are encumbered with reservations designed to exempt the U.S. from international standards that go beyond existing constitutional guarantees.
Rights are claims that people make on political authorities—states or coercive institutions generally. Historically such claims, especially those that limit the legitimate actions of a state and protect those of its citizens, have been associated with particular sectors or classes of people. Human rights are those claims and protections to which all people are entitled as human beings. The articulation and legal codification of such claims and protections—and their expansion to cover persons without regard to race, gender, nationality, religion, or other distinguishing characteristics—result from a process of political struggle.
The period since World War II has seen an expanding international consensus around fundamental human rights. The U.S. has played a leading role in this unfolding dynamic, at least with regard to political and civil rights, but this role has been fraught with tension. Assertions that human rights are central to U.S. foreign policy are undermined both by Washington’s reluctance to criticize the practices of commercially or strategically important countries and by a strong sense of exceptionalism—that the U.S. constitution and justice system can’t be improved upon, and that efforts to hold the U.S. accountable to international standards are unacceptable infringements on sovereignty.
U.S. diplomats were influential in drawing up the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two primary international covenants—on political and civil rights (ICCPR) and on economic, social, and cultural rights (ICESCR)—that transformed the principles of the nonbinding declaration into treaty-based legal obligations. This leading diplomatic role coexisted alongside a fundamental ambivalence about the promotion and protection of human rights. Partly out of concern about the implications of human rights standards for U.S. racial segregation policies, for instance, legislators—attempting to shield individual states from international human rights treaty obligations—nearly passed a constitutional amendment in the 1950s (the Bricker amendment) that would have denied independent legislative force to any treaty signed by the U.S. and would have given Congress the power to regulate all executive agreements with foreign countries or international organizations.
The Eisenhower administration, determined to avoid such constraints on its ability to craft foreign policy, avoided the Bricker amendment by signaling Congress, in the words of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, that it "was committed to the exercise of the treaty-making power only within traditional limits," and that this did not include ratification of the human rights covenants under negotiation. Although the two international covenants were opened for signature in 1966, the U.S. did not ratify the ICCPR until 1992 and still has not ratified the ICESCR. In 1994, the Clinton administration secured ratification of the Convention Against Torture (CAT) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). But Washington still has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) or the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Nor has the U.S. joined any of the major International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions guaranteeing core labor rights to organize and engage in collective bargaining.
This exceptionalism is also manifested in the reservations the U.S. attached to those treaties it has joined. U.S. ratification of the ICCPR included a reservation to the prohibition against executions for crimes committed under the age of eighteen. The U.S. ratification of the CERD rejected that treaty’s inclusion of effect as well as intent in determining whether laws and practices are discriminatory. In all such ratifications, moreover, the U.S has insisted that the treaties are not self-executing—in other words, specific implementing legislation is required—and has refused to introduce enabling legislation. Thus Americans cannot claim any of these extra protections in a U.S. court of law. As a result, those ratifications that have occurred are largely empty gestures in terms of providing any additional enforceable rights for U.S. citizens and residents. For good measure, the U.S. has also failed to ratify optional protocols to the treaties that create international oversight committees.
U.S. constitutional safeguards ensure de facto compliance with international human rights standards in many areas, but the divergences are serious. Federal, state, and local politicians and political commentators frequently denigrate international standards, and some U.S. laws violate those standards. The "expedited removal" procedures of the 1996 immigration reform act, for example, conflict with U.S. obligations under the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
U.S. detention of asylum seekers contravenes the international standard which allows for detention only in exceptional circumstances. The government has failed to incorporate the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners—not a treaty but an authoritative interpretation of treaty standards on what constitutes cruel and unusual treatment in custodial settings—into the policy guidelines of corrections departments. In April 1998, the U.S. publicly rejected the finding of the U.N. Special Rapporteur for extrajudicial executions that the death penalty was being applied in an unfair, arbitrary, and discriminatory manner.
http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol4/v4n08hrts.html
The U.S. promotes itself as the world’s foremost proponent of human rights but often objects to scrutiny of its own practices.
The U.S. has failed to ratify many key international human rights treaties and covenants.
Those treaties it has ratified are encumbered with reservations designed to exempt the U.S. from international standards that go beyond existing constitutional guarantees.
Rights are claims that people make on political authorities—states or coercive institutions generally. Historically such claims, especially those that limit the legitimate actions of a state and protect those of its citizens, have been associated with particular sectors or classes of people. Human rights are those claims and protections to which all people are entitled as human beings. The articulation and legal codification of such claims and protections—and their expansion to cover persons without regard to race, gender, nationality, religion, or other distinguishing characteristics—result from a process of political struggle.
The period since World War II has seen an expanding international consensus around fundamental human rights. The U.S. has played a leading role in this unfolding dynamic, at least with regard to political and civil rights, but this role has been fraught with tension. Assertions that human rights are central to U.S. foreign policy are undermined both by Washington’s reluctance to criticize the practices of commercially or strategically important countries and by a strong sense of exceptionalism—that the U.S. constitution and justice system can’t be improved upon, and that efforts to hold the U.S. accountable to international standards are unacceptable infringements on sovereignty.
U.S. diplomats were influential in drawing up the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two primary international covenants—on political and civil rights (ICCPR) and on economic, social, and cultural rights (ICESCR)—that transformed the principles of the nonbinding declaration into treaty-based legal obligations. This leading diplomatic role coexisted alongside a fundamental ambivalence about the promotion and protection of human rights. Partly out of concern about the implications of human rights standards for U.S. racial segregation policies, for instance, legislators—attempting to shield individual states from international human rights treaty obligations—nearly passed a constitutional amendment in the 1950s (the Bricker amendment) that would have denied independent legislative force to any treaty signed by the U.S. and would have given Congress the power to regulate all executive agreements with foreign countries or international organizations.
The Eisenhower administration, determined to avoid such constraints on its ability to craft foreign policy, avoided the Bricker amendment by signaling Congress, in the words of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, that it "was committed to the exercise of the treaty-making power only within traditional limits," and that this did not include ratification of the human rights covenants under negotiation. Although the two international covenants were opened for signature in 1966, the U.S. did not ratify the ICCPR until 1992 and still has not ratified the ICESCR. In 1994, the Clinton administration secured ratification of the Convention Against Torture (CAT) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). But Washington still has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) or the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Nor has the U.S. joined any of the major International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions guaranteeing core labor rights to organize and engage in collective bargaining.
This exceptionalism is also manifested in the reservations the U.S. attached to those treaties it has joined. U.S. ratification of the ICCPR included a reservation to the prohibition against executions for crimes committed under the age of eighteen. The U.S. ratification of the CERD rejected that treaty’s inclusion of effect as well as intent in determining whether laws and practices are discriminatory. In all such ratifications, moreover, the U.S has insisted that the treaties are not self-executing—in other words, specific implementing legislation is required—and has refused to introduce enabling legislation. Thus Americans cannot claim any of these extra protections in a U.S. court of law. As a result, those ratifications that have occurred are largely empty gestures in terms of providing any additional enforceable rights for U.S. citizens and residents. For good measure, the U.S. has also failed to ratify optional protocols to the treaties that create international oversight committees.
U.S. constitutional safeguards ensure de facto compliance with international human rights standards in many areas, but the divergences are serious. Federal, state, and local politicians and political commentators frequently denigrate international standards, and some U.S. laws violate those standards. The "expedited removal" procedures of the 1996 immigration reform act, for example, conflict with U.S. obligations under the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
U.S. detention of asylum seekers contravenes the international standard which allows for detention only in exceptional circumstances. The government has failed to incorporate the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners—not a treaty but an authoritative interpretation of treaty standards on what constitutes cruel and unusual treatment in custodial settings—into the policy guidelines of corrections departments. In April 1998, the U.S. publicly rejected the finding of the U.N. Special Rapporteur for extrajudicial executions that the death penalty was being applied in an unfair, arbitrary, and discriminatory manner.