On Friday, April 8, the U.S. State Department released its annual report on human rights. The report included sharp criticism of the human rights records of China, North Korea, Cuba, Burma and Belarus, among others.
The US is arguably a/the leader of the free world, and it is correct to point out serious human rights issues and violations in other countries. But the report would be more meaningful if our own national human rights record was seriously improved, and if the US itself was a model of human rights and ethical consistency at home and abroad.
The USA (other than Somalia) is the only country in the world which has not ratified the Convention of the Rights of the Child; we have not signed the Landmine Treaty, the Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and a host of other major human rights instruments.
Most blatantly, the USA remains a major human rights violator with its ongoing and despicable usage of the death penalty. This nation consistenly ranks in the top 5 executing jurisdictions in the world behind China and Iran; we have and use more methods of execution than any country in the world, and, as has long been documented, the system of capital punishment in the US is plagued with issues of racism, prejudice, mistakes, arbitrariness, and numerous examples of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct.
It is not a cliche...human rights begin at home. The USA needs to commit itself to (seriously) improving its own human rights record before it tries to claim any moral high ground while criticizing the human rights record of others.
Source: Rick Halperin, Amnesty International, Letter to the Editor, Dallas Morning News, April 9, 2011
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