NESRI Commentary

(significant portions of this web page are drawn from the Introduction to “Close to Home” by Larry Cox and Dorothy Thomas)

Introduction
Human Rights Crisis
US Human Rights Movement

Introduction
The United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. Signatory countries recognized a shared obligation to protect the “inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all the members of the human family,” acknowledging respect for rights as the “foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.” In ensuing decades, the language of human rights has provided an effective framework for progressive causes in international politics and jurisprudence. Human rights analysis and activism have advanced the empowerment of women, indigenous peoples’ struggles, the fight against apartheid, efforts to ban torture and capital punishment, and other causes.

Throughout this period, the United States has proudly claimed international leadership in human rights. US political leaders, jurists, and scholars were among the leading architects of the international human rights system in its early phases. Since then, US politicians and diplomats have routinely adopted human rights language in foreign policy: often politicizing human rights to legitimize US interests. Meanwhile, US leaders have consistently rejected applying the human rights framework domestically. The US is only one of two countries in the world that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child – the other being Somalia.

The US did not ratify major human rights treaties until the 1990’s, and even when the US has ratified human rights treaties, it has placed significant limitations on them that do not allow for their direct enforcement in US courts.

Human Rights Crisis
Currently, the United States is facing a human rights crisis. Civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights have all been attacked and undermined in the courts, legislatures, workplaces and the streets. Economic and social rights in particular are virtually unrecognized in the US¹.

The United States faces:

• The highest rate of child poverty among industrialized nations².
• Over 46 million people without health insurance,
• Over 36 million people suffering food insecurity,
• a shortfall of 5 million affordable housing units and 14% of households with critical housing needs,
• Over 20% of the population suffering from inadequate literacy skills,
• The longest working hours in the industrialized world, and
• Working families that cannot afford basic needs such as housing and health care.

While post 9/11 violations have been more visible and dramatic – including the use of torture by US officials within and outside of the US, in truth the erosion of rights began decades ago. The Supreme Court has weakened protection for a range of rights, including the right to due process, the right to organize for fair wages, the right to make reproductive health decisions and many more. Legislative changes have also allowed increased profiteering by large corporate actors in key sectors (such as the health sector) leading to human rights violations. Finally, the increased concentration of wealth in the US threatens the right to an adequate standard of living for ever larger numbers of US workers.

The attacks on these rights have cut across issue areas and across communities. All social justice advocates have a strong interest in reversing these trends and creating new ones that protect human rights. But the domestic advocacy community often lacks the conceptual framework and/or advocacy structures to link all our issues in ways that can bring our energies together to fight cross-cutting assaults on rights. A growing number of activists have come to believe that a human rights approach can address the current dynamic of advocacy communities working in parallel ways but often in isolation from one another.

US Human Rights Movement
The US human rights movement seeks a revolution in values with the goal of promoting social and economic justice at home and on a global scale. Underlying all human rights work in the US is an ongoing challenge to the US government’s refusal to accept that global human rights standards apply within the United States and protect all people within its borders. Examining the United States through the lens of human rights helps identify persistent inequities in US society and offers a vision for social change.

Visionary leaders such as W.E.B. Dubois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. looked to human rights and international mechanisms as potential vehicles for meaningful social change and an end to racial oppression despite being fiercely attacked as “un-American” for doing so. In the current political climate, where civil liberties are being systematically attacked and the gap between rich and poor is persistently growing, it is arguably more important than ever to claim these rights and pressure the U.S. government to guarantee them.

Finally, because current US security policies threaten the credibility of international law and appear to undermine the very concept of human rights, the stakes continue to rise for the domestic human rights movement. Only a vigorous and growing domestic movement in the US can counter the trend towards repression and the growing disregard for human dignity abroad and at home.

Human rights provides domestic advocates with 1) vision, 2) legal framework, 3) method and 4) strategy:

Vision
Human rights are the expression of what is required to be fully human. They are not a reward for certain behaviors or for enjoying a certain status such as being a citizen or property owner or white person. They belong to all human beings equally. This is similar to a more limited set of “inalienable rights” that informed the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Human rights assert the inalienability of rights in a much broader sense than has ever been expressed constitutionally. The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that, “recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” The simple use of the term human rights instead of women’s or workers or prisoners or immigrant or sexuality rights, for example, elicits an understanding of rights as inherently the same for all people rather than as defined by this or that particular status.

This principle has been a battleground throughout U.S. history. At times, particularly when there is a perception of an internal or external threat to national security, the scope and meaning of inalienable rights come under assault. Increasingly, and dangerously, rights are seen as a gift granted by the state (and able to be revoked by the state) and even, in some instances, as something the state itself can assert. This prepares the way for their erosion or loss.

Legal Framework
For many U.S. legal advocates who work in the constitutional framework, the idea of an alternative, inalienable, universal source of legal rights is very new. However, domestic legal experts are increasingly appreciating the usefulness of human rights. This emerges from a context of growing conservatism in the federal and state bench, diminishing meaningful remedies for grievous abuse and, especially after September 11th, the attack on established civil rights and liberties, including due process, access to counsel, equal protection of freedom of information, all of which limit or block the use of purely domestic remedies to rights violations.

Although human rights litigation is still in its very formative stages, there are more examples of activist attorneys using human rights law – particularly as an interpretive tool. That a human rights consciousness has the potential to create and broaden enforceable legal standards is reflected in incremental but significant legal victories in arenas such as the death penalty, affirmative action, and the right to be free of discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Method
With its focus on affirming human dignity and equity, human rights are conducive to participatory methods of education, organizing and fact-finding. Human rights have the potential to alter the usual dynamics of social change work in the US, in which the “affected” and their advocates can become somewhat estranged. As poor people, workers, immigrants, women, LGBTQ, prisoners and others become aware of their human rights and organize to defend them, they gradually become the agents rather than the objects of social change. This begins to alter the power balance between those who experience human rights abuse and those who act on their behalf, moving them from client/professional relationship toward a more equal partnership. To some observers this may seem like a subtle shift. But its value in terms of sustaining long-term, community-based advocacy for social change may be far-reaching.

Strategy
As human rights help to transform U.S. social justice methods, they also support the emergence of new, multidimensional advocacy strategies that transcend the familiar boundaries of identity, issue and country. The focus on human dignity and universally inalienable rights gives the human rights framework a great potential to bridge and coordinate a diverse range of interests around a particular issue that impacts their constituencies. The multi-faceted advocacy offered through the human rights framework allows for the formation of unlikely allies, broad bases for support and wide inclusiveness of message.

In particular, human rights provide an interdependence approach. One of the core principles of the human rights framework is that rights are interdependent and indivisible. Thus, the framework validates the obvious reality that if you undermine one right (such as housing) you also imperil other rights (such as health or political participation). Widespread and consistent incorporation of this principle into domestic rights based analysis and advocacy approaches can serve as a conceptual tool for domestic advocates to work in a more integrated and strategic way.

Human rights also includes universal economic and social rights. Thus, human rights can contribute to building a much needed foundation for economic and social rights domestically. The framework provides internationally validated legal standards with compelling and thoughtfully developed economic and social rights principles and criteria. As wealth concentration in the US increases at alarming rates, it is no longer adequate to solely advocate for an equal “piece of the pie” for marginalized communities (although this remains critical) given that the pie left to ordinary people shrinks almost daily. (see NESRI presentation at the Latina Health Summit) By developing a foundation for economic and social rights, we can elevate issues that affect a wide cross section of the population to human rights dimensions, and create a consciousness that human rights, and economic and social rights in particular, are in the interest of all people living in the United States.

Larry Cox is senior program officer for international human rights at the Ford Foundation.

¹The right to education for children is a notable exception and is recognized in 49 state constitutions.

²The term industrialized does not include “newly industrialized” countries such as Mexico, India and South Africa.