{"id":2591,"date":"2012-06-27T07:34:39","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T11:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sj\/?p=2591"},"modified":"2012-10-13T00:40:41","modified_gmt":"2012-10-13T04:40:41","slug":"unhrc-periodic-rights-review-us-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2012\/06\/27\/unhrc-periodic-rights-review-us-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"UNHRC: Periodic Rights Review (US edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sj\/2012\/05\/30\/awkward-deadpan-rant-china-reviews-human-rights-within-the-us\/\">recent post<\/a><\/strong> about China&#8217;s parody of the annual US reports on national human rights made me want to read the actual reports. \u00a0It&#8217;s the sort of cleanly organized information that I love, combined with the lack of citations and categories that I hate. \u00a0We&#8217;ve never issued a high-level summary of that form about our own country. \u00a0But we did take part in a <strong>review<\/strong> of national human rights last year, for the UN Human Rights Committee &#8211; something similarly high-level but less methodical.<\/p>\n<p>If this sort of thing interests you, you will enjoy the full details of that process, which gives quite a rich flavor to our internal national discourse, complete with:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A puffy initial &#8220;toward a more perfect world&#8221;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.state.gov\/documents\/organization\/146379.pdf\">self-assessment<\/a><\/li>\n<li>A mix of moral, practical and political\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.state.gov\/documents\/organization\/158198.pdf\">recommendations<\/a>\u00a0from all UN member states (put forth by any interested state during an open 3-hr Q&amp;A session, and compiled into their own report; resulting in a fascinating set of ~250 recs including 70 or so duplicates for the popular ones)<\/li>\n<li>A quick\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.state.gov\/s\/l\/releases\/remarks\/150677.htm\">reflection<\/a>\u00a0after that Q&amp;A, followed by a refreshingly detailed set of\u00a0\u00a0straightforward\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.state.gov\/j\/drl\/upr\/157986.htm\">responses to those recommendations<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The recs and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.state.gov\/j\/drl\/upr\/157986.htm\">responses<\/a>\u00a0are worth reading all the way through. \u00a0They are concise and &#8211; aside from Cuba\u00a0and Venezuela occasionally derailing the discussion &#8211; all seem to take the process most seriously. \u00a0If you&#8217;re not keen on all the details, here are some highlighted recs\u00a0<em>with our responses in italics<\/em>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Perennial topics: \u00a0Ratify the declaration of indigenous rights (x10 different recommendations for this):\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.survivalinternational.org\/news\/6788\">yes, done<\/a><\/em>; \u00a0similar covenants on the rights of women; on children; and on the disabled(x20+):\u00a0<em>support, let&#8217;s make progress<\/em>; \u00a0the covenant on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/International_Covenant_on_Economic,_Social_and_Cultural_Rights\">economic, social and cultural rights<\/a>\u00a0(x18):\u00a0<em>sorry no progress here<\/em>;\u00a0<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>limit our policy of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/discover\/10.2307\/2204206?uid=3739696&amp;uid=2129&amp;uid=2&amp;uid=70&amp;uid=4&amp;uid=3739256&amp;sid=56217861243\">treaty reservations<\/a>:\u00a0<em>no, though we may consider specifics<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Capital_punishment\">death penalty<\/a>: \u00a0this is unsurprisingly the juiciest topic. \u00a0We are the last western country to kill prisoners, which is more clearly immoral to each generation. \u00a0This drew the plurality of recs. \u00a0Again, \u00a0straightforward and telling\u00a0responses\u00a0(Abolish the death penalty(x20+):\u00a0<em>no<\/em>; \u00a0place a national moratorium on the death penalty (x10):\u00a0<em>no<\/em>; \u00a0consider placing a moratorium on the death penalty(x5):\u00a0<em>no<\/em>; \u00a0restrict the number of offenses carrying the death penalty(x2):<em>\u00a0n<\/em>oo; \u00a0consider reviewing relevant laws or studying the possibility of starting a campaign to implement a moratorium(x3):\u00a0<em>still no<\/em>; \u00a0withdraw the reservation to article 6, paragraph 5 of the\u00a0International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights that prohibits the death penalty for\u00a0those who committed a crime when they were minors(x1):\u00a0<em>not as such<\/em>; \u00a0consider\u00a0withdrawing the reservation to article 6, paragraph 5 of the ICCPR(x2):\u00a0<em>okay,\u00a0will consider<\/em>.)<\/li>\n<li>Those 200+ recommendations just keep giving. \u00a0Algeria made the recommendation I did above, &#8220;include and rank the human rights situation in the US in the annual country reports on human rights &#8211; as was done for the\u00a0annual report on trafficking of persons&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.state.gov\/j\/tip\/rls\/tiprpt\/2010\/index.htm\">in 2010<\/a>) \u00a0This was met with one of our few specious responses:\u00a0<em>no need, also we don&#8217;t rank anyone<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Norway is awesome. \u00a0They make 7 solid apolitical recommendations. No rehashing international policy disputes or convention-signing, which can be nominal at best: a focus on essential changes that can be carried out now, and would be historically significant.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<p>All this gets at my\u00a0<strong>initial questions<\/strong>\u00a0in more detail than I knew how to ask. \u00a0\u00a0Details after the jump.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Are we open to including the US in these annual reports<\/span>? \u00a0We said no last year. \u00a0But a year earlier, the State Dept \u00a0recognized the value in exactly such a change for the biggest sub-report on human rights: \u00a0human trafficking. \u00a0 From the introduction to the 2010 Trafficking In Persons report: &#8220;<em>The Report, for the first time, includes a ranking of the United States based on the same standards to which we hold other countries. The United States takes [this] not as a reprieve but as a responsibility to strengthen global efforts against modern slavery, including those within America. This human rights abuse is universal, and no one should claim immunity from its reach or from the responsibility to confront it.<\/em>&#8221; \u00a0One assumes the same holds true for all human rights abuses. \u00a0So: maybe-soon-yes?<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Are we still considering setting up an umbrella federal human rights body<\/span>?\u00a0\u00a0It is a very popular request by our peers, and we&#8217;re open to considering it; but have no active plan we hope to implement.<\/p>\n<p>And this raises a few new questions, about the death penalty and whether we are capable of hearing what other cultures are saying on that score; and about Norway&#8217;s other recommendations. \u00a0I will write more about these aspects of the review in a future post. \u00a0<strong>Update:\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/sj\/2012\/10\/13\/unhrc-periodic-rights-review-us-edition-part-2\/\">Part 2 is now posted<\/a> with the details of those recommendations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My recent post about China&#8217;s parody of the annual US reports on national human rights made me want to read the actual reports. \u00a0It&#8217;s the sort of cleanly organized information that I love, combined with the lack of citations and categories that I hate. \u00a0We&#8217;ve never issued a high-level summary of that form about our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[207,211,215,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indescribable","category-international","category-too-weird-for-fiction","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-FN","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2591"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2907,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions\/2907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}