Human Rights

"The notion of human right builds on our shared humanity. These rights are not derived from the citizenship of any country, or the membership of any nation, but are presumed to be claims or entitlements of every human being. They differ, therefore, from constitutionally created rights guaranteed for specific people."
Amartya Sen
"Finland’s child poverty rate at less than 5 percent, the lowest of all rich countries. By contrast the child poverty rate in the United States comes close to a shocking 25 percent ... nearly a quarter of the entire population of children. Out of all the countries that UNICEF surveyed, the United States was actually next to last. Only Romania fared worse." the Nordic Theory of Everything, In Search of a Better Life: Anu Partanen

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The only two countries that did not ratify the Convention on the rights of the child are the US and Somalia. A UN report documents the terrible violence against children that globally obtains today. "Every country in the world with the exception of two (Somalia and ... the United States) has ratified the International Convention on the Rights of the Child."

Values

Social Contract

Bill of Rights

Healthcare

Race

Immigration

Prisons

Women

Children

Torture

International Law

Death Penalty

Republicans

National Security State

CIA

US

Israel

We Charge Genocide

Genocide Convention

Raphael Lemkin

HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMEWORK

'I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?'

The practice of separating families amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child. While the rights of children are generally held in high regard in the US, it is the only country in the world not to have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We encourage it to accede to the Convention and to fully respect the rights of all children. U.N. Human Rights office to United States: End policy separating immigrant children from parents at border (6/5/2018)
...sending kids to Guantanamo is uniquely dangerous. It's easy to imagine the Defense Department restricting or totally denying journalists, lawyers, and human rights groups access to monitor or investigate, enabling officials to commits abuses with little risk of being discovered. Members of Congress, who've already been refused access to visit detention facilities on the mainland, may have little or no ability to conduct effective oversight at Guantanamo. Kids sent to Guantanamo might be put in expedited removal proceedings (deported without the opportunity see a judge) that we've explained "invite, and guarantee, error." The Trump administration might argue they have no rights at Guantanamo at all. I've Been to Guantanamo. It's No Place for Kids.
Last month, I visited the Homestead detention center in Florida, a notorious, for-profit prison camp that's holding immigrant children, some of whom were snatched from their parents more than a year ago by Donald Trump's cruel family separation policy. It was chilling to see children, and so many of them, locked up in a remote prison camp. I talked with some of these children-children with fears and hopes for the future, awaiting the moment that they would be released from imprisonment and finally reunited with their families. Senator Jeff Merkley

Pregnant and shackled: why inmates are still giving birth cuffed and bound (1/24/2020)

Look at the record. Republicans do not care about human rights.

Finally, A Torture Investigation (by the British.)

High Roads for Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be a part of US law since it was signed in 1948, but it is recognized only selectively by the US. (Full text of International Human Rights instruments.)

To pay for its far flung military adventures, the US has reneged on the social contract: pensions are an endangered species, healthcare doesn't cover everyone, Republicans are attempting to downsize social security, privatized eldercare is obscenely expensive and often atrocious. The US is a country that no longer cares for its people: the sure sign of a failed state. It is a consequence of Republican self-serving tax avoidance, profligate spending on foreign wars, war profiteering, corporate welfare, and downright corruption. A severe decline in the US standard of living appears inevitable.

Housing Is a Human Right — Governments Need to Recognize It (7/30/2023)

A Quietly Big Idea on How We Think About Homeless People (11/1/2021) NYT

Links

Human Rights and International Justice (McArthur Foundation)

Human Rights Watch

Bibliography

The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens: Seyla Benhabib

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

The Dark Side, by investigative journalist Jane Mayer, lays out the roles that Vice President Dick Cheney and his advisor, David Addington, played in setting administration policies for capturing and interrogating detainees. It is a beautifully written, well-researched must-read for anyone who wants to understand how the U.S. slipped from a nation that played an essential role in the adoption of the Geneva Conventions to a nation known to violate those conventions, how the administration's secret adoption of torture as a policy contributed false evidence of an Iraq connection to the terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda to justify attacking Iraq, and much more.

Sadly, it is a story of power that silenced or incapacitated the many members of government, the military, and the intelligence community who knew better but were powerless to do the right thing for the U.S. and for the world. Hopefully the book's revelations will move our country and the next administration toward higher ground. Doubleday, 2008.

While America Aged: Roger Lowenstein (video)

Axis rule in occupied Europe : laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress by Lemkin, Raphael, 1900-1959

Books from the New Press