I am a third year International Relations and French double major and Human Rights minor. Human Rights have always been a topic of interest to me, but after taking an intro course and being exposed to how fairly recent the concept is, I became interested in being part of the change. My hobbies include listening to a lot of music and watching a lot of movies.
Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Image
HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE FACE OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
Author’s Note:
This piece was written for Professor Watenpaugh’s Human Rights 134 honors class as a final paper. Tracing the beginning of the human rights movement through the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, this paper focuses on the shaky relationship the United States holds with human rights and provides a brief reflection on how this could be changed in the future.
Before September 11, 2001, the United States held prestige in regards to the promotion of human rights. The United States government used treaties and doctrines to work with other governments regarding how to best promote rights abroad. After the reaction of the United States to the events we know as 9/11, the legitimacy of the United States in regards to human rights dwindled. Human rights thought was already on the decline; however, the Bush administration threatened human rights in a new way, not previously seen. It is clear that this change in thought and culture has had long lasting effects on the United States internally and externally, as torture and lack of privacy among citizens becomes routine, and the legitimacy of the U.S. as a human rights leader diminishes.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s massive involvement in the creation of the Universal Doctrine of Human Rights and a movement towards international law, to encode the rights proposed in the UNDHR[1] were hugely important in and outside of the United States. Although the US did not fully sign on to treaties such as the IESCR[2] or ICCPR[3], their ability to leverage influence in the promotion of human rights in other countries remained high. The Cold War put a hold on human rights in general, under the dirty proxy wars and the concept of realism. This changed at the end of the twentieth century, when the so-called “Human Rights revolution” (beginning with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall) started to incite hope into the hearts of people worldwide. The end of the dirty wars and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison brought promise and hope of a better future to a generation who had been waiting for good news. Yet shortly after, throughout the 1990s, more events with the opposite impact occurred; the genocide in Rwanda, wars in Yugoslavia, the first Syrian civil war and then, the hardest blow to positive ideas, the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
The image of the U.S. was already diminishing in terms of being a shining example of human rights as leaders stepped further and further away from such ideas. In the aftermath of these attacks the way nations interacted with one another was irreversibly changed. In responding to these attacks, the US became the opposite of what it used to, and according to Ayreh Neier lost their moral high ground. As philosopher John Locke said the “desire for collective security will induce people to acquiesce in the executive’s possession and exercise of prerogative power… persons are more disposed to endure than to remedy governmental abuse” (Kaufman-Osborn 78). The Bush administration took away what benefits had been made to the human rights movement in the United States, from the movement towards the U.S. involvement in the International Criminal Court under the Rome Statute, to infringements on personal dignity and rights. The government became a mechanism to inflict abuses on the world through taking away in order to add new rights (this can be seen in examples such as protecting our right to life through taking away our right to privacy). The withdrawal from the International Criminal Court was only the first step to a changed pathway towards disregarding human rights.
The lack of governmental support forced human rights movements to find new ways to remedy abuses in the world. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the numerous Transnational Activist Networks involved in advocacy, direct action is not taken through governments but rather through bringing attention to issues. Rather than direct action, these entities must act through “naming and shaming” campaigns, calling out violations and assessing responsibility or through the TANs “boomerang method” (Watenpaugh, lecture, March 8, 2015). Reducing human rights to this degree after so much time spent working towards promoting them was a major step backwards. The fact that most of these issues lay at the hands of the United States, who was not acting on them and creating their own issues, encouraged the rest of the world follow in the wrong direction.
Specific incidents of human rights abuses under the Bush administration include the loss of rights under the Transportation Security Administration, the monitoring of communications, and most notably appalling from a country that is a supposed promoter of human rights, the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. These were detainees said to be extremely dangerous and holding valuable information that would be a threat to American security. Acts of torture at Guantánamo Bay included force-feeding, waterboarding, slapping, cramped confinement with insects placed in with the prisoner, and a number of other equally disturbing acts (Wilcox 118 and Memorandum for John Rizzo pt I). The Bush administration has denied any of these acts modes of tortures, as organizations such as the United Nations, and other individual rights activists, repeatedly call for the detention center to be shut down (Wilcox 120). This center became a modern-era Gulag (Amnesty International), and a mockery of the values that the United States has been advocating for internationally, throughout the twentieth century.
In time, it is certainly possible for the United States to regain moral high ground. We as a nation and individual citizens must hearken back to the foundation of our country: from the Bill of Rights where many of our basic rights law derive from, all the way to the more modern human rights ideas stemming from the Universal Doctrine of Human Rights. We need a leader to take control of issues that may seem “trivial” in the face of more pressing domestic matters, but whose negligence echo worldwide. This refocusing will place us back on the moral high ground, where we have legitimacy to advocate for and to protect basic human rights, with other states following our lead. I believe all of this is possible, and I believe it is coming in the young generation, who will in a sense overthrow the “Baby Boomers” that have belittled human rights in order push a misperceived agenda of stronger national security. With an educated, hopeful and ready to mobilize generation waiting in the wings, the true “Human Rights Revolution” is yet to come.
Works Cited
Wilcox, Lauren, and Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn. Torture: Power, Democracy, and the Human Body. Ed. Shampa Biswas and Zahi Anbra Zalloua. Seattle, WA: U of Washington, 2011. 78+. Print.
Watenpaugh, Keith. HMR 134. UC Davis, Davis. 8 Mar. 2015. Lecture.
[1] Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a 1948 document adopted by a number of countries after World War II.
[2] International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted by UN, a multilateral treaty working to guarantee Economic, Social and Cultural rights with 164 parties and 70 signatories. Most notable exception: US signed but not ratified.
[3] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), adopted by UN General Assembly, a multilateral treaty committing parties to respect civil and political rights (including right to life, freedom of religion, speech and assembly, etc.)