Ironically, in light of its long-stated commitment to upholding
human rights at home and in its foreign policy, the U.S. government
today poses a threat to the universality of human rights. Thus,
when it came to strengthening international standards and
institutions, the United States repeated the 1997 diplomatic
debacle of its opposition to the Mine Ban Treaty. Also by opposing
the new treaty creating an International Criminal Court if it would
apply to U.S. citizens, Washington revealed itself once more to be
severely out of step with most of the rest of the world. It is
inevitable that Washington's efforts to exempt the United States
from the international system for protecting human rights will be
mimicked by far less savory regimes. Moreover, the U.S.
government's unwillingness to subject itself to international
human-rights standards risks diminishing what should be one of the
most important voices defending human rights.
On landmines, the U.S. government determined to continue using
these indiscriminate weapons in Korea and elsewhere, persisted in
its refusal to sign a treaty that has been endorsed by the
overwhelming majority of the world's governments. Indeed, the
United States stood alone with Turkey among the NATO states,
Finland among the governments of the European Union, and Cuba
within the entire Western Hemisphere as the only countries in these
areas not to have signed the treaty. The Pentagon's refusal to
countenance the abolition on humanitarian grounds of an actively
used weapons system, and President Clinton's unwillingness to spend
the political capital needed to overrule his generals, left the
United States a bystander to one of the most important and dramatic
human-rights developments of recent years.
International Criminal Court
The Clinton administration found itself just as isolated on the
issue of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The United States
was one of only seven governments to vote against the Rome treaty -
along with China, Iraq, Libya, Israel, Qatar, and Yemen - against
120 supporters. The Rome delegates went a long way toward
addressing U.S. fears of frivolous or politically motivated
prosecutions. The ICC will have jurisdiction only if national
courts are unable or unwilling to pursue a matter - meaning that
the United States, with its strong civilian and military criminal
justice systems, would be able to avoid any prosecution of its
citizens by conscientiously acting on the case in question.
Moreover, the definition of the crime of greatest concern to the
United States - the one governing attacks that cause
disproportionate harm to civilians - was rewritten to make it much
harder to call an attack a crime. Indeed, to the detriment of the
court, its ability to acquire jurisdiction over a crime was
significantly restricted in a futile effort to placate Washington.
Yet the United States still left the Rome conference vowing to
reopen negotiations and "fix" the treaty.
What Washington evidently wanted, and what the Rome delegates
refused to cede, was the opportunity to exempt U.S. nationals
altogether from the court's reach. That demand, never stated
explicitly but implicit in many of the U.S. proposals, is
inconsistent with the fundamental principles that justice must
apply equally to all. As the world's sole superpower, the United
States may well be involved in security matters around the globe,
but no one should accept that its military might gives it license
to violate rights or reject international scrutiny of its conduct.
As the like-minded governments assemble to sixty treaty
ratifications needed to launch the ICC, they should resist further
U.S. efforts to weaken this historic institution.
Convenience Rather Than Humanitarianism
A refusal to accept evolving international standards also lay
behind Washington's continued obstruction of international efforts
to ban the use of children under 18 years of age as soldiers. The
use of child soldiers - an estimated 300,000 worldwide -
contributes significantly to the inhumanity of war. The children
themselves risk death, physical injury, and deep psychological
sears while, in light of their lack of maturity, they endanger
those who encounter them. The widely ratified Convention of the
Rights of the Child sets 18 as the age of maturity on most other
matters, and there is a broad international consensus that this
bright line should be used to define the appropriate age of
soldiers. But because the Pentagon recruits 17-year-olds out of
secondary school, the U.S. government refuses to join a proposed
protocol barring the recruitment of anyone younger than 18. Indeed,
by blocking a "consensus," the Clinton administration refuses to
permit anyone else to adopt the protocol for themselves - even
though 17-year-olds constitute less than ½ of 1 percent of
active-duty American soldiers. Washington thus has elevated a
matter of recruiting convenience over the humanitarian imperative
of curbing this cruel and dangerous aspect of warfare.
There were small indications that the United States was feeling
pressure for its recalcitrance on these issues. On landmines, the
United States destroyed 3.3 million non-self-destructing "dumb"
mines, but left itself another million mines to use in Korea. It
also announced that it might sign the Mine Ban Treaty by the year
2006, but only if suitable alternatives to landmines could be
developed. On child soldiers, a congressional resolution urged the
administration to stop blocking negotiation of a protocol to
prohibit children under 18 from serving in active combat, but it
remained unclear whether this call would be heeded. On the ICC, the
administration has softened the tone, though not changed the
substance, of its objections. Washington's mistrust of
international human-rights law extends to established standards as
well.
By entering "reservations" to treaties it has ratified or simply
disregarding them, the United States refuses to apply them fully -
on such issues as stopping ongoing execution of juvenile offenders
or providing enhanced protection from invidious discriminatory
treatment. It also is consistently late and superficial in
reporting on its compliance with these treaties. In addition, there
are a host of major treaties that the U.S. still has not ratified -
on women's rights, children's rights, labor rights, economic
rights, and the protection of civilians in time of war. The Clinton
administration was dismissive of a visit by one U.N. special
rapporteur examining the application of the death penalty in the
United States, although it was more helpful when another rapporteur
came to investigate violence against women. The administration also
blocked a proposed Security Council investigation into its bombing
of Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant in Khartoum. The investigation
might have found that the United States lacked evidence to justify
making the plant an appropriate military target.
The administration has been slow to address some of the most
important human-rights violations in the United States. For
example, despite a four-year-old congressional mandate, the Justice
Department still has not taken serious steps to document the scope
of police brutality in the United States. The U.S. government
continues routinely to detain asylum-seekers and to hold them in
inhumane conditions, in violation of international standards on
detention and asylum. Although the Justice Department has filed
suits against Arizona and Michigan regarding sexual abuse of women
in their prisons, it has resisted more systematic efforts to reform
state prison system, such as criminalizing custodial sexual
misconduct, providing a safe complaint mechanism, and tracking
complaints of abuse. Women in federal custody fared better when the
Federal Bureau of Prisons agreed to stop housing women prisoners in
men's facilities and to create en effective procedure for women to
report cases of sexual abuse without risking retaliation.
Mixed Record
The Clinton administration's efforts to promote human rights around
the world were subject to large blind spots. Major parts of Africa,
the Middle East and the former Soviet Union never made it to the
administration's human-rights agenda. As has become common in
recent years, the State Department accurately reported on
human-rights abuses in its annual Country Reports on Human-Rights
Practices. But for many countries, this one-shot commentary was
never repeated in other fora, let alone allowed to influence U.S.
policy. Human-rights concerns rarely ranked with the
administration's other interests.
The administration did best with the pariah countries. It
maintained tough sanctions on Burma for its suppression of
democratic forces. It cut off all aid to the government of Belarus,
funding only the embattled civil society. It expressed outrage at
rebel atrocities in Sierra Leone. It took a strong stand against
abuses by the Sudanese government. It provided generous financial
support to the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the
former Yugoslavia. It also performed well on some more pivotal
countries. In Croatia, it funded the return of refugees and
protested the slow pace of those returns and the government's
resistance to democratization. In Malaysia, it spoke out against
the mistreatment of migrants and the suppression of political
opposition. In Algeria, it kept relations cool while insisting that
the government allow greater transparency on human rights,
particularly investigation of ongoing massacres. In Indonesia, it
worked at high levels to stop attacks on ethnic Chinese.
In several countries, the administration's record was mixed. It
waited far too long as Yugoslav forces battered ethnic Albanian
civilians in Kosovo, but then marshaled NATO military pressure
until Yugoslav President Milosovic agreed, at least for the time
being, to stop the attacks, withdraw some troops, and permit
international monitoring. In Bosnia, U.S. troops helped NATO to
arrest lesser war crimes suspects, but not the leaders of the
genocide, and the Clinton administration repeatedly waived
legislative prohibitions on delivering financial assistance to
communities that harbored indicted suspects.
In Colombia, the administration openly acknowledged the close
working relationship between the army and murderous paramilitary
forces, and denied a visa to a leading general implicated in
atrocities. But the new U.S. ambassador has been silent on human
rights. And the administration implemented half-heartedly and with
no transparency a law requiring it to withhold anti-narcotics
assistance from forces involved in abuse until they bring those
responsible to justice.
The U.S. embassy in Uzbekistan protested repression against
conservative Muslims and monitored their trails, but U.S. aid to
this abusive government grew, and the U.S. Export-Import Bank
approved $215 million in long-term guarantees for U.S. companies
exporting industrial equipment to the country. In Cuba, while
ostensibly concerned about human rights, the U.S. government
pursued an embargo that itself violated the rights to freedom of
expression and movement. Moreover, by adopting an all-or-nothing
approach to President Fidel Castro's continuing rule, Washington
provided little incentive for him to ease repression of civil
society.
In China, the administration helped to enhance dialogue about human
rights; to convince the government to sign a key human-rights
treaty; to secure the release of a handful of prisoners; and to
gain permission for President Clinton, during his visit to the
country, to speak to the public about human rights. It also pushed,
albeit unsuccessfully, for more systematic changes, such as review
of the roughly 2,000 prisoners held for violating the
since-repealed crime of "counterrevolution." But like the European
Union, the administration had no plan, other than waiting for China
to change on its own, for helping to move beyond promises and
dialogue to systematic change. Washington gave up two powerful
sources of leverage - human-rights preconditions to President
Clinton's much-sought trip to China, and efforts to secure a
resolution critical of China before the U.N. Commission on Human
Rights - without developing any alternative way to keep the
pressure on.
Tolerating Repressors
Most troubling were the vast swaths of the globe that were exempt
from U.S. pressure on human rights. In South Asia, the
administration condemned nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, but
said little about their dismal human-rights records. In the Middle
East, Saudi Arabia and its oil-rich or strategically useful
neighbors faced no public pressure on their own records of
repression. Nor did Israel, Egypt or Syria. Israeli abuses, if
mentioned at all, were treated as "obstacles to peace" rather than
human-rights violations. Moreover, although both Israeli and
Palestinian forces routinely torture security suspects, the
U.S.-orchestrated Wye Memorandum addresses only Palestinian forces'
responsibility to respect human rights, and then undercuts even
that duty by suggesting that it must not become a pretext for
failing to implement security provisions.
The petroleum-rich states of Central Asia were also courted without
reference to their repressive conduct. Typically, President
Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan was welcomed at the White House
even though he denies his citizens virtually all civil liberties.
The administration succeeded in securing the release if 10
political prisoners, but a White House press release disingenuously
trumpeted Niyazov's commitment to the rule of law and political
pluralism. It also rewarded him with $96 million in investments
backed by the Export-Import Bank. Human rights similarly took a
back seat to energy interests in Azerbaijan, Kazakstan, and
Uzbekistan. In Africa, where the United States hoped to promote
stability, it favored strategic alliances with new leaders rather
than overtly addressing their human-rights problems. In Rwanda,
where insurgents, including some guilty of the 1994 genocide,
fought in the northwest, Washington continued its steady backing of
the government and even considered extending it lethal military
aid. Mistakenly believing that public criticism of slaughter by
Rwandan troops might weaken the government, the Clinton
administration remained publicly silent about most such abuses,
whether in Rwanda or in Congo. In Uganda, Washington firmly
supported President Museveni, whose help it needs to contain Sudan.
While the administration drew attention to abuses by the Lord's
Resistance Army, a Sudan-backed rebel group in Uganda that abducts
and abuses children, it ignored abuses by Uganda's rebel ally in
Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Army. U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright met with Sudanese rebel leaders in December 1997
without publicly mentioning their human-rights problems.
Good and Less Good News
There was good news on the legislative front, but also an emerging
threat. Legislation introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy sought to
narrow a loophole in U.S. law that in 1998 had allowed the United
States to train a host of unsavory militaries, including those in
Colombia, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea,
Rwanda, Suriname, and Turkey. New legislation also requires arms
traders to register whether or not their arms flow through the
United States, narrowing another loophole used to support abusive
regimes. A much-contested bill to sanction governments that commit
or tolerate religious repression finally became law. Although its
sanctions provisions are weaker that first proposed, it otherwise
corrects various shortcomings in the original legislation, which
had focused on the persecution of Christians over others, exempted
the most common forms of persecution faced by believers around the
world in a misguided effort to protect Israel, divorced the
protection of religious freedom from the broader panoply of civil
and political rights with which it is inextricably linked, and
privileged asylum-seekers claiming religious persecution over
others.
A law funding International Monetary Fund required future study of
its impact on labor rights. Meanwhile, at a time when the European
Union has formally conditioned virtually all aid and preferential
tariffs on respect for human rights, a business lobby working with
administration and congressional allies was pushing to restrict the
use of U.S. economic sanctions to promote human rights, including
the denial of aid or preferential tariffs to abusive regimes.
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