[News] US halts cooperation with UN on potential human rights violations

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/jan/04/trump-administration-un-human-rights-violations 



  US halts cooperation with UN on potential human rights violations

Ed Pilkington - January 4, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Trump administration 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/trump-administration> has stopped 
cooperating with UN investigators over potential human rights violations 
occurring inside America, in a move that delivers a major blow to 
vulnerable US communities and sends a dangerous signal to authoritarian 
regimes around the world.

Quietly and unnoticed, the state department has ceased to respond to 
official complaints from UN special rapporteurs, the network of 
independent experts who act as global watchdogs on fundamental issues 
such as poverty, migration, freedom of expression and justice. There has 
been no response to any such formal query since 7 May 2018, with at 
least 13 requests going unanswered 
<https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TmSearch/Results?page=1>.

Nor has the Trump administration extended any invitation to a UN monitor 
to visit the US to investigate human rights inside the country since the 
start of Donald Trump’s term two years ago in January 2017. Two UN 
experts have made official fact-finding visits under his watch – the 
special rapporteurs on extreme poverty 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/22/united-nations-poverty-report-philip-alston> 
and privacy 
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Privacy/SR/Pages/SRPrivacyIndex.aspx> – 
but both were invited initially by Barack Obama, who hosted 16 such 
visits during his presidency.

Sign up for the new US morning briefing

The silent treatment being meted out to key players in the UN’s system 
for advancing human rights marks a stark break with US practice going 
back decades. Though some areas of American public life have 
consistently been ruled out of bounds to UN investigators – US prisons 
and the detention camp on Guantánamo Bay are deemed off-limits – 
Washington has in general welcomed monitors into the US as part of a 
wider commitment to upholding international norms.

Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s human 
rights program, said the shift gave the impression the US was no longer 
serious about honoring its own human rights obligations. The ripple 
effect around the world would be dire.

“They are sending a very dangerous message to other countries: that if 
you don’t cooperate with UN experts they will just go away. That’s a 
serious setback to the system created after World War II to ensure that 
domestic human rights violations could no longer be seen as an internal 
matter,” Dakwar said.

Among the formal approaches that have failed to receive a response from 
the US over the past several months are queries about family separation 
of Central Americans 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/18/why-are-families-being-separated-at-the-us-border-explainer>at 
the US border with Mexico 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/18/why-are-families-being-separated-at-the-us-border-explainer>, 
death threats against a transgender activist in Seattle and allegations 
of anti-gay bias in the sentencing to death of a prisoner in South Dakota.

The new breach with international experts comes at a perilous moment for 
the US, both externally and within its own borders. Externally, Trump 
has forged an increasingly unilateral path on foreign policy: in June he 
shocked the world 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/19/us-quits-un-human-rights-council-cesspool-political-bias> 
by pulling the US out of the UN human rights council, complaining it was 
a “cesspool of political bias”, and he has caused further consternation 
by siding with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, despite 
evidence linking Prince Mohammed 
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/20/trump-saudi-arabia-jamal-khashoggi-crown-prince> 
to the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Domestically, Trump has run roughshod over the constitutional rights of 
asylum seekers 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/08/trump-administration-blocks-asylum-claims-by-those-crossing-border-illegally> 
at the US border, attempted to deny the legal existence of transgender 
people 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/21/trump-administration-define-transgender-out-of-existence-new-york-times> 
and introduced tax cuts that have greatly exacerbated income inequality 
in a country in which 40 million people 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/15/extreme-poverty-america-un-special-monitor-report> 
live in poverty, among many other controversies.

The timing of the break in relations with UN investigators coincides 
with the publication in June of the official findings of Philip Alston’s 
visit to the US to research poverty. As UN special rapporteur on extreme 
poverty, Alston castigated 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/22/united-nations-poverty-report-philip-alston> 
the Trump administration for aggravating levels of inequality that were 
already the most glaring in the western world.

Alston’s robust criticism was received badly 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/21/nikki-haley-un-poverty-report-misleading-politically-motivated> 
by Nikki Haley, then US ambassador, who accused him of biased reporting. 
She hinted that the administration was minded to turn its back on 
international accountability by saying it was “patently ridiculous” that 
the UN should focus on America’s internal human rights standards when it 
could be looking into countries like Burundi.

It is not known whether the decision to sever cooperation with the UN 
monitors was directly related to the spat over Alston’s report. But 
emails seen by the Guardian involving top US state department officials 
in Geneva show that by July they were rebuffing contact with 
international agencies on grounds that they were “considering how best 
to engage with special procedures”, the blanket term for the network of 
UN special rapporteurs.

In a statement to the Guardian, the state department declined to explain 
why it was no longer responding to UN experts or to say whether 
non-cooperation was now permanent policy. A spokesman said the US 
remained “deeply committed to the promotion and defense of human rights 
around the globe”, but pointedly omitted any reference to US compliance 
domestically.

Similarly, the spokesman expressed “strong support” for UN special 
rapporteurs, but only in the context of their investigations into other 
countries. The US backs those mandates “that have proven effective in 
illuminating the most grave human rights environments, including in Iran 
and DPRK [North Korea]”, he said.

Paradoxically, the Trump administration’s decision to shun the UN’s 
independent watchdogs places the US among a tiny minority of 
uncooperative states. There are very few countries that resist 
international oversight from UN special rapporteurs – one of them is 
North Korea.

Individual UN experts expressed dismay at the US cold shoulder they are 
now receiving. Alston said the move would set “the most unfortunate 
precedent as the US has always tried to press other countries to be 
accountable. This sends a message that you can opt out of routine 
scrutiny if you don’t like what is being said about your record on human 
rights.”

Felipe González Morales, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights 
of migrants 
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/migration/srmigrants/pages/srmigrantsindex.aspx>, 
has twice approached the US government requesting a formal visit to 
inspect how the country is handling immigration including the crisis at 
the Mexican border – once in March and then in July. He has yet to 
receive a reply.

“In the absence of an official visit, we cannot publish a country report 
to be presented to the UN human rights council,” he said.

The UN expert on adequate housing 
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/housing/pages/leilanifarha.aspx>, 
Leilani Farha, told the Guardian that she was concerned about the 
silence emanating from the US state department. Having been appointed to 
the post in 2014, she made five official complaints to the Obama 
administration and in each case received “timely, thoughtful and 
constructive responses, even if we continued to disagree”.

Farha expressed unease at the new lack of engagement at a time when so 
many human rights problems were cropping up in the US, including a 
homelessness crisis in many cities.

“This suggests the US has abandoned even the most rudimentary forms of 
human rights accountability, and a whittling away of access to justice 
for those in the US whose human rights may have been violated,” Farha 
said. “It also demonstrates a rather inappropriate arrogance, at a time 
when human rights in the US are particularly fragile.”

The US government will not be able to avoid international scrutiny 
entirely. In 2020 it will face a routine “universal periodic review” 
undertaken by the human rights council – an obligation Trump cannot 
escape despite having withdrawn US membership.


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