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January 2010 Edition
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Obama Spells New Hope
for Human Rights
By: Marjorie Cohn
Celebrations
of Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States erupted in
countries around the world. From Europe to Africa to the Middle East, people
were jubilant.
After suffering though eight years of an administration that violated more
human rights than any other in U.S. history, Obama spells hope for a new
day.
While George W. Bush was President, I wrote Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the
Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, which chronicled his war of aggression, policy
of torture, illegal killings, unlawful Guantánamo detentions, and secret
spying on Americans.
When the book was published, it seemed unimaginable that we could elect a
President who would turn those policies around. But the election of Obama
holds that potential.
This is the first in a series of articles in which I will suggest how the
Obama administration can start undoing some of the damage Bush wrought, by
ratifying three of the major human rights treaties and the Rome Statute for
the International Criminal Court.
Although the U.S. government frequently criticizes other countries for their
human rights transgressions, the United States has been one of the most
flagrant violators.
We have refused to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (ICESCR); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); and the Convention on the Rights of
the Child (CRC). And while the United States worked with other countries for
50 years to create the International Criminal Court, it has failed to ratify
that treaty as well.
When we ratify a treaty, it becomes part of U.S. law under the Supremacy
Clause of the Constitution.
In this article, I will explain why the United States should ratify the
ICESCR, which is particularly relevant now that we are in the midst of the
most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.
In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal helped lift us out
of the Depression, gave his famous Four Freedoms Speech, focused on freedom
of speech and expression, freedom to worship, freedom from want, and freedom
from fear.
Roosevelt fleshed out the freedom from want and fear principles in his
Economic Bill of Rights.
It contained equality of opportunity, the right to a job and a decent wage,
the end of special privileges for the few, universal civil liberties, and
guaranteed old-age pensions, unemployment insurance and medical care.
FDR’s bill of rights formed the basis for the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, which Eleanor Roosevelt helped draft, and which the U.N. General
Assembly adopted in 1949.
The Declaration embraced two types of human rights: civil and political
rights on the one hand; and economic, social and cultural rights on the
other.
These rights were codified in two binding treaties: the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
The United States ratified the ICCPR in 1992. But it has refused to commit
itself to the protection of economic, social and cultural rights. Since the
Reagan administration, there has been a policy to define human rights in
terms of civil and political rights, but to dismiss economic, social and
cultural rights as akin to social welfare, or socialism.
Indeed, the United States' inhumane policy toward Cuba exemplifies this
dichotomy.
The U.S. government has criticized civil and political rights in Cuba while
disregarding Cubans' superior access to universal housing, health care,
education and public accommodations, and its guarantee of paid maternity
leave and equal pay rates.
The refusal to enshrine rights such as employment, education, food, housing,
and health care in U.S. law is the reason the United States has not ratified
the ICESCR.
This treaty contains the right to work in just and favorable conditions, to
an adequate standard of living, to the highest attainable standards of
physical and mental health, to education, to housing, and to enjoyment of
the benefits of cultural freedom and scientific progress. It also guarantees
equal rights for men and women, the right to work, the right to form and
join trade unions, the right to social security and social insurance, and
protection and assistance to the family.
In the United States, more than 10 million people are unemployed, 2 to 3
million families are homeless each year, and 46 million have no health care
benefits. Untold numbers lost their retirement savings when the stock market
crashed. Obama has pledged to give the rebuilding of our economy top
priority after he is sworn in as President. He promised to create jobs and
to ensure that all Americans are covered by health insurance.
When Obama said he would cut taxes for 95 percent of the people but end the
tax cuts for the rich, he was criticized for wanting to “spread the wealth.”
But Obama’s plan is fully consistent with our progressive income tax system.
After the election, 15,000 physicians called for a single-payer health care
plan, which Obama and Congress should seriously consider.
The United States’ flouting of the United Nations in its unilateral war on
Iraq, and torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and
Iraq, has engendered widespread condemnation in the international community.
Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, citing Professor Louis Henkin, summarized
the hypocrisy of the United States in the area of human rights as follows:
“In the cathedral of human rights, the U.S. is more like a flying buttress
than a pillar – choosing to stand outside the international structure
supporting the international human rights system but without being willing
to subject its own conduct to the scrutiny of the system.”
We should encourage President Obama to send the ICESCR to the Senate for
advice and consent to ratification. Becoming a party to that treaty will
help not only the people in this country; it will also engender respect for
the United States around the world.
About the Author:
Marjorie Cohn, a professor at
Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild,
served as a judge on the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience in
Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange.
She is a member of the
Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her latest
book is Rules of Disengagement.
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