US: Uphold Treaty Against Racial Discrimination

     Washington, DC, February 7, 2008 – The United States has failed to comply with its obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

     In the 48-page report, Human Rights Watch documents US noncompliance with ICERD in seven key areas. The treaty, ratified by the United States in 1994, requires member governments to take affirmative steps to eliminate discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national or ethnic origin in all areas of public life.

     The Human Rights Watch report was prepared for submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, an international body that monitors and reports on compliance with ICERD. The committee will examine US compliance with ICERD at a session in Geneva, Switzerland, on February 21-22, 2008.

     “The convention against racial discrimination was the first major human rights treaty signed by the US,” said Alison Parker, deputy director of the US program at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report. “Unfortunately, more than 42 years later, the US has failed to uphold its treaty obligations in several important respects.”

     Here’s the Summary:

I. Summary
     Human Rights Watch would like to express our appreciation to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (the “Committee”) for this opportunity to provide it with information on the United States’ compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (“ICERD”).1 We intend for this submission to be part of the record for the Committee’s review of the United States’ compliance with its obligations under ICERD during its 72nd session.

     At the outset, we would like to acknowledge the much more comprehensive submissions of our colleague NGOs, specifically the joint shadow reports written by a wide cross-section of US NGOs and coordinated by the US Human Rights Network,2 as well as the detailed report prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union,3 among others. These NGO submissions address an enormous range of policies and practices of the United States, and raise grave and important concerns about the record of the United States in upholding its obligations under ICERD. Many of these are issues that we have researched and reported on in the past.4

     For example, we believe that racial discrimination in the criminal justice system in the United States, a topic of ongoing concern to Human Rights Watch, is adequately discussed in the other NGO submissions. We therefore do not reiterate these same concerns here. Instead, in this submission we have sought to present the Committee with additional research by Human Rights Watch, some of which was compiled solely for this submission, which provides new examples, data, or analysis of failures of the United States to uphold its obligations under ICERD in seven specific areas.

     First, we provide specific evidence of the United States government’s failure to inform the constituent states about ICERD and its provisions and to seek information from the states, so that it can review their policies and practices in light of the treaty. We believe these failures constitute violations of Article 2.1 of ICERD.

     Second, we view the discriminatory treatment of Haitian refugees as a violation of the right to equality before the law as provided in Article 5.

     Third, in the context of racial disparities in the sentencing of black and white youth to life without the possibility of parole, in this report Human Rights Watch presents the Committee with new data that challenge the US government’s assertion that “disparities are related primarily to differential involvement in crime by the various groups … rather than to differential handling of persons in the criminal justice system.”5 Our data demonstrate that in at least 10 states black youth arrested for murder are significantly more likely to be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole than white youth arrested for the same crime. We believe these data provide an egregious example of unequal treatment before the courts, in violation of the United States’ treaty obligations under Article 5(a).

     Fourth, we show how the use of corporal punishment against youth of color in certain US public schools constitutes a discriminatory failure to protect these students against bodily harm, as required by Article 5(b).

     Fifth, we show how the failure to protect the family unity and nonrefoulement rights of non-citizens deported after serving their sentences for criminal convictions violates Article 5(c).

     Sixth, we demonstrate how, in the context of the HIV and AIDS epidemic, the United States is failing to uphold the right to non-discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to health in Article 5(e).

     Finally, we show how the executive branch of the US government has violated its obligations under Article 6 by holding non-citizen “enemy combatants” at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; by stripping non-citizens of their right to habeas corpus under US law; and by subjecting non-citizens to the unfair, fundamentally flawed system of trial by military commission in order to ascertain criminal responsibility in their cases.

     In the sections that follow, for each of these violations we have analyzed in detail the applicable legal standards and recommended a particular course of action for the Committee to consider as it evaluates the conduct of the United States in light of its obligations under ICERD.

     We urge the Committee to view this Human Rights Watch submission as a complement to the joint submissions and not as an attempt to catalog all of the instances in which the United States’ policies or practices raise concerns under ICERD. Seen in this light, we hope the Committee will find the following information helpful to its work.

     There are several things within this report that tell me that there is an attempt to control US affairs right down to the local arena. The first relates to ICERD’s attempt to force the federal gov’t to control the state’s own policies and law, which is not constitutional. (show me where the Constitution allows for fedeeral cotnrol over the states)

First, we provide specific evidence of the United States government’s failure to inform the constituent states about ICERD and its provisions and to seek information from the states, so that it can review their policies and practices in light of the treaty. We believe these failures constitute violations of Article 2.1 of ICERD.

     The states are not or should not be subject to federal treaties and such. In fact, the only way that the federal gov’t can do that is by bribing the states to comply with whatever requirements they come up with and they do this by giving the people’s own money back to them in the form of subsidies and the like. Highway matching dollars, capital building funds for education, and such are common avenues to state control for the federal gov’t. Keep in mind that Albert is not an expert in these matters, but he bases all his comments on the his own personal observations of what the federal gov’t does to attain control over the states, and it’s through bribery of a sort. Let’s call it back-door bribery.

Second, we view the discriminatory treatment of Haitian refugees as a violation of the right to equality before the law as provided in Article 5.

     Is there something I missed here? The Haitian refugees broke the law when they decided to get into their little boats and float across the ocean to the shores of the U.S. We must have control over our borders and they are not U.S. Citizens. A good bit of what this report talks about involves people who are not citizens. If they are not citizens, then they are not entitled to the rights and privs of those who are citizens.

     That does not mean the U.s. is not charitable. The world should know by now that the U.S. populace is among the most charitable of people on the face of the earth. We respond to major tragedies across the world with food, money, and volunteers who actually go there to help. No one on the face of the earth should ever say that U.S. citizens are not kind and charitable, but we must maintain control of our borders.

     After all, if we’re going to play this Int’l terrorist game they’ve given us to deal with, they’re going to have to deal with all that goes with it, and that means control of our borders. For any gov’t official to ignore this in light of the “terrorist threat,” it seems criminal to me, Albert.

     I, Albert, will convert this post to one of our regular pages in the next few days and I’ll continue to build on what I have so far.

     Your’s, Albert