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IN THIS ISSUE

Table of Contents

Letter from the President: Connecting the Dots

Notes on the Right: The Enduring Importance of Strategy

EJS December 8 Fundraiser Features Harriet Tubman Jazz Oratorio

Vote Yes on 89: 'Clean Money' Initiative

First California, Now Michigan: Putting Race up for a Vote

Supreme Court to Revisit Brown v. Board in School Cases

EJS, CTA Look at Unconscious Bias in Schools

U.N. Committee Criticizes Racism in U.S.

New Voting Rights Act Under Attack

A First Look at the Roberts Court

Latina/o Law Student Symposium

Foundations Support EJS Efforts to Balance Racial Justice Debate

Farewell from our Irmas Fellow

Staff News and Notes

Newsletter Editors:
Elaine Elinson
Miguel Gavaldón

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U.N. Committee Criticizes Continuing Discrimination in the U.S.


By Cynthia Soohoo, Director, Bringing Human Rights Home Project, Human Rights Institute, Columbia Law School

Last fall, EJS began working with a coalition of more than 140 U.S. social justice groups in an effort to focus international attention on human rights violations in the United States.   EJS focused on race discrimination and the impact of the intent doctrine on civil rights litigation, and other groups dealt with issues ranging from voting rights to environmental racism and the death penalty.

What followed was a truly remarkable mobilization of groups across the country to provide the U.N. with information about a wide range of domestic abuses.  In July, more than 60 activists attended U.N. hearings to urge the international body to address these issues. 

On July 28, their efforts paid off when a U.N. committee of human rights experts strongly criticized the United States’ human rights record both overseas and at home.  “While many expected the Committee to have harsh words about U.S. abuses in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib,” said Professor Lisa Crooms of Howard Law School, “the Committee also highlighted a number of domestic equality issues, including de facto discrimination in housing and public schools, racial profiling by law enforcement and discrimination in disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.  In addition, the Committee expressed concern about the disproportionate impact of felon disenfranchisement and the death penalty on minority communities.” 

The committee’s critique was part of a periodic review of U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).  “The ICCPR is a core U.N. human rights treaty that covers basic and fundamental civil and political rights,” said Margaret Huang, of the group Global Rights.  “Among the basic rights protected in the Covenant is the right to equality and non-discrimination.”   The U.S. is also party to another U.N. treaty, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which deals with racial discrimination in greater depth.  The U.S. is expected to begin a similar review for CERD compliance next year.

Parties to U.N. human rights treaties undertake an international obligation to respect and ensure treaty rights and to submit to periodic compliance reviews conducted by independent human rights experts.  The 18-member U.N. Human Rights Committee reviews compliance with the ICCPR.

According to Eric Tars, a consultant who worked with U.S. activists, “U.S. social justice organizations drafted ‘shadow reports,’ which challenged the U.S.’s official report, which was submitted to the Human Rights Committee in 2005.  Like EJS, many of the groups were veterans in the domestic fight for social justice and equality, but new to international forums.”

 “The input of advocacy groups was critical to help the Committee focus on the issues of greatest concern and to ensure that it has sufficient information to look behind a government’s official account,” said Huang.  U.S. groups urged the Committee to devote greater attention to domestic human rights abuses, which potentially could have been eclipsed by post-9/11 issues. 

Tars noted, “Information supplied by the groups provided a fuller picture of domestic human rights issues, allowing the Committee to probe government responses in greater detail and challenge mischaracterizations and incomplete information.

“In order to avoid overwhelming the Committee, U.S. activists consciously coordinated approaches and responses,” he added.

The U.S. Government’s Position

The most contentious issues during the review involved U.S. abuses abroad.  Matt Waxman, Principal Deputy Director for Policy Planning at the State Department, argued that the Committee did not have jurisdiction maintaining that the treaty does not apply to “extraterritorial issues” or in instance where the laws of war apply.   Although the State Department agreed that the Committee had authority to consider domestic issues, it broadly interpreted reservations attached as part of the treaty ratification package to argue that certain issues, such as juvenile justice and the administration of the death penalty, were beyond the Committee’s purview.  Where the U.S. did not attach reservations, the U.S. delegation narrowly interpreted the treaty’s substantive provisions, refusing to consider broader interpretations supported by the Committee’s jurisprudence and general comments. 

The Committee’s Conclusions

The review came on the heels of criticism by the U.N. Committee Against Torture (CAT), which reviewed the U.S.’s compliance with the U.N. Convention Against Torture in May.  The CAT criticized aspects of the administration’s “anti-terrorism” polices and raised a number of concerns about the disproportionate use of brutality and excessive force by law enforcement against minorities and other vulnerable groups and allegations of impunity for acts of torture or mistreatment.  The CAT highlighted the lack of prosecutions of members of the Chicago Police Department which targeted African American men for torture to coerce confessions under former police chief Jon Burge. 

The Human Rights Committee similarly found that anti-terrorism policies at home and abroad posed problems under the ICCPR and criticized abusive law enforcement tactics. 

The EJS submission to the Committee, which  focused on the inadequacy of modern-day equal protection law and the discriminatory intent requirement, was one of several that focused on race discrimination in the United States. The Committee reminded the U.S. that the ICCPR prohibits practices that have either the purpose or effect of racial discrimination and recommended measures to address de facto segregation in housing and public schools.  It instructed the U.S. to access the extent to which the death penalty and regulations depriving the right to vote following a felony conviction disproportionately impact minority groups.  The Committee also recommended that the U.S. “continue and intensify” its efforts to put an end to racial profiling” by law enforcement officials.  The Committee also discussed discrimination in employment based on gender and sexual orientation and the lack of uniform hate crime legislation to protect sexual minorities.

In response to strong pressure from  activists about the U.S. government abandonment of the poor and black residents of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Committee recommended that the U.S. review practices and polices to ensure respect for the  implementation of the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement in disaster prevention, assistance and relief.  It instructed that following Katrina, the U.S. should “increase its efforts to ensure that the rights of poor people and in particular African-Americans, are fully taken into consideration in the reconstruction plans with regard to access to housing, education and healthcare. “  The Committee also requested that additional information be submitted within one year on the evacuation of Parish Prison and law enforcement officials’ alleged prevention of crossings of the Greater New Orleans Bridge to Gretna, Louisiana. 

Looking Forward

A frequent criticism of the treaty reporting process is that it the U.N. has no real power to force compliance with its observations and recommendations. However, “the high level of U.S. civil society participation in this year’s  ICCPR review has the potential of transforming the process,” said Professor Crooms.  “In addition to improving the quality of the review by assuring that the Committee’s information is not limited to official and often self-serving government accounts, civil society participation may provide a new mechanism for accountability and political pressure for change.”

The State Department has indicated it will submit its report on U.S. compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination CERD next year.  Over the coming months, it is expected that domestic groups will sustain the same level of participation for that important review and push for implementation of the ICCPR recommendations.

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