U.N. Carries Out First Review of U.S. Human Rights Record| Washington Post

GENEVA — The United States on Friday disavowed torture and pledged to treat terror suspects humanely, but set aside calls to drop the death penalty, as the United Nations carried out its first review of Washington’s human rights record.

As part a groundbreaking commitment to improvement under the Obama administration, the U.S. joined the 47-nation Human Rights Council in 2009. And in doing so, submitted to more international scrutiny.

State Department legal adviser Harold Koh outlined nine key improvement areas Friday, encompassing about 174 of the 228 recommendations the community had urged on Washington in an initial report last November. Nations are held accountable for what they agree to improve.

He said the U.S. would agree to improvements in areas ranging from civil rights to national security to immigration, including intolerance of torture and the humane treatment of suspects at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.

But in some areas the U.S. stance was unchanged, particularly on the death penalty, which had led to a chorus of objections from many European nations.

Critics say the law is inhumane and unfairly applied. But Koh said capital punishment is permitted under international law.

“To those who desire as a matter of policy to end capital punishment in the United States — and I count myself among those — I note the decision made by the government of Illinois on March 9 to abolish that state’s death penalty,” Koh told the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council.

Cuba, Iran and Venezuela complained the U.S. was brushing too many recommendations aside, while China and Russia said the U.S. was not going far enough on Guantanamo, and called for it to be shut down as President Barack Obama had promised.

Other nations urged the U.S. to reduce overcrowding in prisons, ratify international treaties on the rights of women and children, and take further steps to prevent racial profiling. Koh said Obama also would push to ratify additional measures under the Geneva Conventions and add protections for anyone it detains in an international armed conflict.

Civil society groups have praised the U.S. for involving itself in the review process, which all U.N. member states have to undergo every four years. Japan, France and Cameroon had led the writing of the report on the U.S.

However, Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s human rights program, said one of the biggest U.S. shortcomings is that it has still has not created an independent human rights monitoring commission as has been done in over 100 countries.

“While the Obama administration should be commended for its positive engagement in this process, in order to lead by example, this international engagement must be followed by concrete domestic actions to bring U.S. laws and policies in line with international human rights standards,” he said.

Reprint: U.S. Agrees to Improve Human Rights Record in First Assessment, But Death Penalty Remains –By Assoc Press | Washington Post

U.N. Carries Out First Review of U.S. Human Rights Record | WikiNews

 

World Leaders Meet, One Mission in Mind: Abolish the Death Penalty

Participants at the Fourth World Congress Against Death Penalty at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva February 24, 2010. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

For 200 years now the international movement for the universal abolition of the death penalty has been spearheaded by Italy. With the start of the congress, Laura Mirachian, Italian Ambassador to the United Nations, underlined the special role of her country in the fight against the death penalty. “We have a long tradition of rejecting the death penalty. This is deeply rooted in our culture,” she told Deutsche Welle. “It goes back as far as the 18th century. Tuscany was the first state to abolish the death penalty in 1786 during the war.”

Declaration of Human Rights laid groundwork

However, it took the modern Italy until 1948 to actually abolish it. In the same year, the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” adopted by the UN General Assembly laid the legal groundwork for the fight against the death penalty. Although the abolition is not explicitly mentioned, Article 3 guarantees the right to life free from inhumane or humiliating punishment.

Yet, in the first 20 years of the declaration, only the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany rejected the death penalty in 1949. Not until the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966 did the UN ask its member states to abolish the death penalty or at least restrict it to very serious crimes. See Second Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

“Dramatic shift since 1980″

This was a first, albeit only a perfunctionary breakthrough. Until then the death penalty was the unchallenged international norm, says Mario Morazzitti, speaker of the Italian religious group Sankt Egidio. “Until the 1970s only 23 nations abolished the death penalty.” But since 1980 Morazzitti identifies among the 192 member states a clear trend away from the death penalty. “During the last 30 years, there has been a dramatic shift. Europe became the first continent in the world where there was no death penalty.”

Driven by Italy, the European states wanted to extend the ban to the rest of the world: First through the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva and then the General Assembly in New York. The European efforts failed however, when not only the US and China but also many former European colonies in Africa and Asia refused to accept their anti-death-penalty resolution in 1998. “This was due to a strong opposition, who saw the resolution as a neo-colonial interpretation of human rights interfering in the states’ internal affairs,” says Morazzitti.

56 states and territories hold on to death penalty

For the first time in 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted a Resolution 62/149 demanding the abolition of the death penalty. The resolution states clearly that the imposition and execution of the death penalty is not part of the internal affairs of a particular state and its law but a question of universal human rights.

Over 140 states have in the meantime stopped imposing the death penalty. The majority of them have abolished it by law for all crimes without exception not only in times of peace but also during war. However, 56 states and territories still hold on to the death penalty. Last year, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and the US carried out the most death penalties in the world.

Hope for new UN resolution later this year

Activists at the Fourth World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Geneva hope to achieve a moratorium on the imposition and execution of the death penalty in those 56 states and territories and push them further toward complete abolition. This goal is to be reinforced by a new resolution in the General Assembly later this year. Activists hope that this time the majority for the resolution will be bigger than in 2007 and that the US and China will not vote against it but abstain from their vote.

Over 1,700 participants, including national political leaders, activists and representatives of international organizations, have gathered in Geneva for the three-day Congress.

Sources: Deutsche Welle, International Federation for Human Rights, United Nations