The Upcoming US ICCPR Review
By Cynthia Soohoo, Director, International Women’s Human Rights Clinic, City University of New York Law School
This weekend, I along with about eighty U.S. human rights activists will head to Geneva to discuss the U.S.’s human rights record as the UN Human Rights Committee conducts a formal review of the U.S.’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil Rights (ICCPR) on March 13 and 14.
The ICCPR review begins an exciting year for human rights advocacy in the United States. Although the U.S. has only ratified 3 of the major U.N. human rights treaties (plus Optional Protocols to the Children’s Rights Convention), this year, UN treaty bodies will get a chance to comment on the U.S.’s record under all three treaties. In August, the U.S’s record on race will be analyzed during a Race Convention review. U.S. compliance with the Convention Against Torture will be scrutinized in November. And as a bonus, the U.S. will also undergo the Universal Periodic Review process – an overall review of its human rights record that is not tied to a specific treaty – in 2015.
The UN treaty reviews are a rare and important opportunity to focus attention on U.S. laws and practices that clearly violate international norms, including the death penalty, disenfranchisement of individuals with felony convictions, and the incarceration of youth in adult jails and prisons.
However, the reviews rely on robust civil society participation to ensure that the UN Committees have accurate information and focus on the full range of issues that our communities care about. When the U.S. was reviewed for its compliance with the ICCPR in 2006, the international community was rightly focused on the U.S.’s “war on terror” practices post-9/11. U.S. practices in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay became an important focus of the review. However, equally important was the Committee’s criticism of the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina, racial disparities in housing and education and police misconduct. These issues emerged during the review because of civil society consistently and forcefully raised the issues.
While civil society involvement is essential for the treaty review process, the sheer number of U.S. organizations, many of which are new to UN processes, creates some challenges. Since 2006, the US Human Rights Network has been training grassroots groups to help them navigate the UN system. The Network is encouraging and facilitating coordination to improve civil society’s efficiency and amplify its impact. And, to ensure that the UN processes are actually “brought home,” the Network is training and supporting activists who want to incorporate international human rights standards and the UN reviews in their domestic campaigns and organizing work.
In 2006, it was incredibly powerful to see U.S. civil society groups from around the country, working on different issues, come together to support each other and to work to ensure that the United States lives up to its human rights commitments. Following the 2006, ICCPR review, the UN Human Rights Committee released strong critiques and specific and detailed recommendations to the U.S. We hope we will see similar results this year.
For information about the March ICCPR review and the upcoming treaty reviews, check out the US Human Rights Network’s website.