Human Rights

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Human rights Summary

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Human Rights

The massive slaughter of civilians in the 1930s and 1940s and the accompanying horrors of World War II and the Holocaust produced a worldwide commitment to preserving peace, opening the way for the creation of the United Nations (UN) in 1944–1945. The United Nations was dedicated to world peace, and its charter affirmed that respect for human rights was fundamental to peace.

The United States was an early and forceful champion of domestic and international human rights law in the immediate aftermath of World War II. By leading the 1945 international tribunal at Nuremberg, which tried Nazis for crimes against humanity, the United States was breaking new ground in determining the role of international human rights law in the conduct of national politics. The Nuremberg trials established the criminality of those who violated basic rights, even when these violators were high government officials acting in their official capacities.

In 1947 President Harry Truman appointed Eleanor Roosevelt to chair the UN Human Rights Commission. It produced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was the first coherent body of international human rights and norms—political, economic, social, and cultural. The forty-eight original signatories of the Universal Declaration represented UN member countries on five continents—a fact that puts to rest allegations from some critics, then and now, that human rights is a "Western" notion.

The principles set out in the Universal Declaration were later made concrete in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. The covenants came into force in 1976, by which time the Universal Declaration had become the accepted standard of human rights compliance. The separate covenants, however, represented the growing differences in emphasis between East and West, North and South. Developing countries and the countries of the former Communist bloc have placed much weight on the rights contained in the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, whereas the United States and other Western nations consistently have defined the concept of "basic human rights" in the terms elaborated in the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Although U.S. officials actively participated in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its two covenants, U.S. political leaders resisted signing and ratifying the covenants until 1992, long after they had entered into force. Of the fourteen human rights conventions that have entered into force within the UN framework, the United States has ratified four: the Convention on Genocide in 1989; the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—with reservations—in 1992; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1994; and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, also in 1994. In 2002 the United States ratified two of the optional protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but not the convention itself. The United States became a party to the International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees by signing the protocol in 1968.

The Cold War Years

For about a quarter of a century during the Cold War (1946–1991), U.S. references to human rights and freedoms were made almost exclusively in the context of communism and national security. During the 1950s members of Congress viewed adherence to international human rights obligations with suspicion. Cold War geopolitical priorities led the United States to support several anti-Communist regimes that violated human rights.

The 1970s marked a watershed for human rights advocacy in the United States. The United States joined Canada and thirty-three European governments on August 1, 1975, in signing the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The Soviet Union had sought this agreement in order to gain legitimacy among Western countries, but the human rights component of the act ultimately became the basis for the establishment of dissident groups throughout Eastern Europe who demanded human rights compliance. The act provided justification for Western nations, and the United States in particular, to intercede with Soviet authorities on behalf of dissidents and their rights.

While the Helsinki Act was being negotiated from 1973 to 1975, Congressional attention was being drawn to the major human rights violations occurring in a number of countries including Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, the Philippines, and South Korea, under U.S.supported dictatorships. Domestic groups in opposition to the dictators in these countries invoked universal human rights principles and called for international support. The role of the United States in preventing or failing to prevent—or, as some argued, condoning—human rights abuses in these and other nations provoked heated national debate. In March 1974 the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on International Organization and Movements opened four months of hearings on the International Protection of Human Rights. The hearings served as a forum for people from government, religious groups, labor organizations, and human rights oversight groups to call for adherence to national and international human rights.

Under the presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977–1980), defense of human rights was institutionalized in the Departments of State and Treasury. The Carter administration signed international covenants, appointed human rights advocates to high government office, filed reports that denounced governments for violating human rights, and passed legislation that made U.S. foreign assistance contingent on respect for human rights. Carter's human rights policies were most effective in Latin America but unevenly applied elsewhere.

The major human rights advocacy and oversight groups that formed during the 1970s have continued their work and, along with U.S.-based humanitarian assistance agencies, have earned worldwide respect for their professionalism and commitment. These groups have influenced the ongoing debate over the U.S. role in international human rights.

The 1980s to 2000s

The administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton maintained the language and mechanisms of U.S. human rights advocacy, but with the clear purpose of defining human rights and geopolitical interests as mutually reinforcing approaches. By the 1980s domestic judicial mechanisms also embraced aspects of international human rights. For example, U.S. courts were allowed to try noncitizen perpetrators of human rights violations that had taken place outside of the United States. In the 1990s the determination of refugee status steadily became more professional and fair for most groups. Immigration courts increasingly acknowledged gender-based forms of persecution as grounds for refugee status. With regard to international mechanisms, however, the U.S. government reverted to a policy of rejection. It first signed and then, in 2002, revoked its proposed participation in the International Criminal Court.

Domestic Enforcement of Human Rights

The civil rights struggle, which began in the 1950s, later broadened to incorporate human rights perspectives. In the 1970s domestic rights struggles in turn mobilized Latino and Native American groups, women, homosexuals, and the disabled. Within these movements were individuals and groups demanding political rights and the means to achieve integration, and others who insisted on moving beyond legal gains to economic and social advances.

By the time Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, the Civil Rights movement had expanded into several groups with different economic and social goals. The movement in opposition to war in Vietnam was both reinforcing and competing with the domestic Civil Rights movement. By 1964 King was making stronger demands for jobs and housing and had denounced the war. He was assassinated in Memphis in 1968 while supporting a garbage collectors' strike.

While U.S. jurisprudence is strong in upholding the rights of citizens, in the later decades of the twentieth century, human rights organizations have drawn particular attention to police abuse and the disproportionate rates of imprisonment and death penalty sentences for African Americans and Latinos.

The Twenty-First Century

Wars—both those threatened and those that have come to pass—have affected American views on the meaning of human rights and on the nation's extension of civil rights to its own citizens. How and even whether Americans should be advancing the cause of human rights in other countries is much debated. Some Americans question the nation's role in encouraging or enforcing human rights abroad, whereas others view this as an essential responsibility.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, international human rights and national constitutional rights have been pitted against security measures in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. What are the rights to fair judicial procedure for foreigners detained on suspicion of terrorism? To what extent can the government infringe on citizens' rights in the pursuit of possible terrorists? These questions animate the ongoing debate over human rights.