The United States has fancied itself a protector of human rights for decades. According to the March 31 Washington Post article “U.S. to Join U.N. Human Rights Council,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that “Human rights are an essential element of American global foreign policy.” She continued, “With others, we will engage in the work of improving the U.N. human rights system.”
In fact, in the same article the Post reports that New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully freely withdrew his country’s name to make a place for the US on the Council, saying, “Frankly, by any objective measure, membership of the Council by the U.S. is more likely to create positive changes more quickly than we could have hoped to achieve them.”
That’s a rather hefty assessment of our government’s dedication to human rights, and it’s an even greater responsibility since we did win that seat in the Council only a month ago. But while we uphold human rights as tenets in our involvement overseas, does our government give human rights an equally essential place in domestic policy?
The notion of universal human rights fell into public discourse after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech in 1941, in which he proclaimed that all humans everywhere deserve freedom of speech and religion, and to be free from want and fear.
The Four Freedoms were then incorporated into the United Nation’s International Bill of Human Rights, and within this declaration is one of the most important documents in history: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This beautifully-written declaration lays out several rights already guaranteed by the US Constitution, such as “the right to life, liberty, and the security of person,” the right to a fair and speedy trial, and so on. It also includes several other rights that more specifically answer global issues by prohibiting “cruel, inhuman or degrading torture or imprisonment” and “slavery in all its forms”.
There are two additional treatise within the International Bill of Human Rights: The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
Given our proud support for human rights and our former President’s apparent involvement in developing the basic ideas for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one would think that our government would be first in line to sign and ratify each piece of this historical, significant bill.
Nope.
We signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and both covenants, but although over 40 years have passed since its creation, we have yet to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Without ratification, the covenant has no influence on US policies.
The Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. and George W. Administrations, and even the Clinton Administration failed to ratify the covenant. Of course, this is also due to the political division of the Senate during their administrations since treatise must be ratified by a two-thirds majority. However, because they have a two-thirds majority, current Senate Democrats have no excuse to delay ratifying this treaty–and neither does President Obama.
But it begs the question. What’s so incendiary about the ICESCR? Look no further than Articles 11 and 12.
Article 11 commits all ratified parties to “recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions.”
Article 12 commits all ratified parties to “recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”
Critics of the ICESCR took issue with the idea of the government being compelled to grant every person the right to health care and an adequate standard of living, which sounds oddly related to our current debate over public option health care.
And the members of the peanut gallery in 1966 still exist today. They call themselves the Republican Party.
According to David Shiman, who wrote an article on the International Bill of Human Rights for Univ. of Minnesota’s Human Rights Resource Center, “The Reagan and Bush administrations took the view that economic, social, and cultural rights were not really rights but merely desirable social goals and therefore should not be the object of binding treaties.”
That echoes current Republican sentiments against the public option. And so, their 44-year-old argument has been and perhaps always will be that while other industrialized, democratic nations have decided that the right to health care is an important part of human rights, they simply view it as a good thing to have if it’s something you can afford.
The explanation Shiman gives for the Clinton Administration’s failure to pass the International Bill of Rights is especially poignant for today’s health care reform debate. While Clinton was in office, he wrote, “The Clinton Administration has not denied the nature of these rights but has not found it politically expedient to engage in a battle with Congress over the Covenant.”
It is my great hope that at the end of this 44-year-long health care debate, neither the Obama Administration or the Democratic Congress and Senate reverts to ideas that are “politically expedient.”
It’s especially important for President Obama, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, and the UN Human Rights Council to be reminded that until public option health care and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights is passed, our government can only continue to be hypocritical in its advocacy for human rights.