Some New Ways to Mobilize Shame for US Human Rights Deficiencies

By Susan Scott

NLG members know well how far we are from “the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests”.  From racial profiling to immigrant raids and detention, to retaliatory firing, to homelessness, evictions and foreclosures, it is hard to believe that our government ever signed on to (and helped draft!) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) back in 1948. Our constitutional tradition favoring property rights and political and civil rights over economic and social rights makes us truly “exceptional” among nations and goes a long way toward explaining why the US is the only industrialized country that has no universal health care and has failed to ratify the one core treaty emanating from the UDHR that obligates government to guarantee and protect the rights to health care, housing, food, jobs and a decent standard of living – the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

In fact, the US has ratified only three of the nine major human rights treaties and may soon stand alone as the only country that has failed to ratify the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) –assuming Somalia ratifies in the coming months.

Unless a nation has ratified a human rights treaty, it is not obligated to report to the UN committees charged with overseeing compliance.  Although US NGOs such as the US Human Rights Network and Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute have been filing “shadow reports” to UN committees for the three treaties the US has ratified, the US government is under no obligation to consult with civil society on its treaty reports.  And the US has had no obligation to report on its treatment of economic and social rights because it has not ratified the treaties that cover them.

In 2007, the General Assembly approved a new and much more comprehensive reporting and review mechanism, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).  Now, each of the 192 member states undergoes review by the UN Human Rights Council every four years for compliance with the UDHR and all human rights treaties it has signed or ratified.  Three times a year, the UN Human Rights Council holds hearings in Geneva to review 16 countries.  The US debut review comes up at the end of this year, and reports are due this spring from the government and “civil society”.  NGOs are invited to submit a 5-page individual report or 10-page “cluster” reports with other organizations.  The reports will be posted on the UN’s UPR website and reviewed by the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights for inclusion in its 10-page “civil society” report to the Human Rights Council.

The Guild is participating in the UPR in a number of ways. I’m working with several other human rights organizations, through the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers Network, to draft a “cluster report” on the US failure to ratify core human rights treaties, especially those addressing economic and social rights.  The Labor and Employment Committee is preparing a report on the lack of statutory protection for labor organizing and collective bargaining for certain sectors of the workforce.

The UPR process has the potential to do a better job of “mobilizing shame” for US human rights deficiencies than the periodic reporting process for ratified treaties.  For one thing, it is far more political:  the review is undertaken by the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council, rather than the committees of experts and academics that perform the individual treaty reviews.  For another, the invitation to civil society will presumably open up the process to grassroots groups and could further the US public’s understanding of international human rights obligations in a way that is unprecedented in this country – and at a time when Americans’  lack of economic and social rights has surfaced as never before since the signing of the UDHR.

Under the auspices of the International Committee, I put together a “toolkit” to help local activists press their local governments to pass a resolution calling on Obama and the Senate to ratify the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, signed by Jimmy Carter in 1977 but never submitted to the Senate for ratification.  The ICESCR, ratified by 162 nations, including all industrialized nations and all US allies, would require the US government to recognize health care, housing, food, employment and social security as basic human rights. The toolkit, which includes a model resolution, guidance on how to get a local resolution passed, and information on the ICESCR, was approved at the 2009 NLG Convention in Seattle and can be found at the IC website (www.nlginternational.org).

Susan Scott is co-chair of the NLG International Committee and board president of the  Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute in Berkeley, CA.