Human Rights and Opportunity in America

International human rights are deeply American in their history and in the values that they represent.  And they are vital to ensuring opportunity for all in the United States of America.

The founders of our nation recognized that we are all created equal and endowed by our creator with unalienable rights.  Then, as now, bringing human rights home to the U.S. is key to realizing the American promise of opportunity for all.

Opportunity is Rooted in Human Rights Laws.  The international human rights system that the United States helped to craft after World War II obligates all nations to provide the essential elements of opportunity—including economic security, equal treatment, a voice in decisions that affect us, and a chance for rehabilitation after mistakes—through concrete policies and practices.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, provides that  “everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.”  The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights requires “the creation of conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness.”  The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination obligates the U.S. and all other signatory governments to “review governmental and local policies, and to amend, rescind, or nullify any laws and regulations which have the effect of creating or perpetuating discrimination wherever it exists.”  And the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides that “the penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.”

Our Goal: Bringing Human Rights Home. Applying these principles here in the United States would drastically expand opportunity for all Americans.  Think of what bringing human rights home would mean for Americans who work one or more full-time jobs yet can’t make enough to support their families.  Consider how our inadequate and unequal healthcare system and our overcrowded and racially biased prison system would have to change to satisfy human rights standards, or how the tragedy in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina might have played out differently.

A Promise, Unfulfilled. Unfortunately, while our government has trumpeted certain human rights internationally, we have resisted applying many of these rights here at home, and have been openly hostile to others.  We still have not ratified important treaties like the Convention on the Rights of the Child—which every nation but the U.S. and Somalia has joined—and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.  We have actively opposed the recognition of economic, social, and cultural rights like the right to education and healthcare.  We have placed limitations on enforcement of the treaties we have ratified, making them difficult to enforce.  And we have been slow to incorporate those and other treaties fully into our domestic laws.

Real Rights, Real Action. Fortunately, there are concrete steps that our federal, state, and local governments can take today to make human rights a real and effective tool for realizing American opportunity:

Signing and ratifying the remaining human rights treaties.  The U.S. can begin to reclaim its human rights heritage by ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)—three longstanding agreements with broad international support that are fully consistent with our national values.  And while individual states, cities, and towns cannot  act for the nation as a whole, they can adopt and enforce human rights treaties for their own residents, as San Francisco, CA did recently when it incorporated CEDAW into its municipal law.

Removing reservations and limitations on treaties to which we have agreed.  The U.S. should drop its stated limitations—known as “reservations”—on human rights treaties it has signed and ratified.  Among other things, this would allow U.S. courts more easily to consider how our human rights obligations square with our current policies and practices.

Adopting a new generation of opportunity and human rights laws to complement existing constitutional and civil rights protections.  Implementing our human rights obligations through federal, state, and local laws will reinvigorate opportunity in the U.S. in innovative ways.  It will help forge new healthcare approaches that serve all Americans effectively and equitably.  It will, for example, help to ensure a fair and livable wage for working families.  And it will help create a fair and rehabilitative criminal justice system that treats mental illness and drug addiction as public health problems and is focused on reintroducing people who commit crimes into productive and lawful participation in our society.

Links to Human Rights Documents

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
Convention on the Rights of the Child
American Convention of Human Rights
American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief
Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners