One compelling sign that people in the U.S. very much want to "bring human rights home" is the range of local and community driven efforts across the country. Below is a commentary from Eugene, Oregon. Citizens in Eugene have begun a conversation on how to reclaim human rights for ourselves! We can't wait to see how it goes!
Guest Viewpoint
Published: Tuesday, November 6, 2007
As schoolchildren, we were taught that all people are endowed with certain inalienable rights, including rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We learned that it is a government’s responsibility to secure these rights for those whose consent is needed to govern. The Declaration of Independence has inspired human rights advocates for generations.
The concept of inalienable human rights was later enshrined in one of the world’s most historically important international agreements: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States played a major role in crafting this document, approved by United Nations General Assembly in 1948. The declaration identified basic human rights which nations — capitalist and socialist, affluent and impoverished — agreed were fundamental to human dignity. Social and economic rights were granted equal importance with civil and political rights.
Since 1948, many major human rights treaties have come into force, ratified by nations around the world (see www.ohchr.org/english/law/index.htm). Some provide for comprehensive protections of vulnerable populations, including women, people of color, children, people with disabilities, indigenous groups and migrant workers and their families.
Others require that governments take positive steps to realize the right of all people to work, adequate wages, fair working conditions, education, health care, food, clothing, shelter, social security and an adequate standard of living. When governments ensure such human rights, people’s quality of life is improved and their opportunities to develop the full range of their capabilities are enhanced.
While the United States regularly condemns human rights violations elsewhere, in recent years its own human rights record has been subject to criticism. For example, critics have raised alleged U.S. human rights abuses abroad in connection with the war on terror.
Critics have also begun focusing on the U.S. government’s domestic human rights record. How, they ask, can the U.S. call upon other nations to support the social and economic human rights contained in the universal declaration (as President Bush did in a Sept. 25 speech at the United Nations), while providing so little support for these rights at home?
Why, in the United States, are poverty, hunger, homelessness, discrimination, lack of access to health care, educational inequalities, unemployment and jobs that fail to pay a living wage not defined and treated as important human rights problems that government at all levels must act to eliminate? Such conditions are considered violations of universal human rights in other nations, but not here.
Unlike many other nations, the United States lacks a national “human rights culture” that stresses the importance and value of universal human rights. And the dynamics of partisan politics in Washington, D.C., do not currently favor a critical examination of U.S. domestic problems through a human rights lens.
Such federal gridlock need not preclude action at lower levels of government. Global warming provides a helpful illustration. Top U.S. officials have been slow to acknowledge scientific evidence of a global warming problem. Many municipalities have forged ahead with solutions on their own and now lead by example.
A similar situation is developing with regard to the desire to “bring human rights home” to the United States. From Seattle to San Francisco, from Chicago to New York, municipalities have adopted or are contemplating the incorporation of international human rights standards in their operations. Such standards call for governments to be proactive, collaborative, transparent and accountable for showing progress when it comes to addressing human rights issues affecting members of the local community.
These developments have not gone unnoticed by Eugene’s Human Rights Commission. One of the commission’s goals is “ensuring that human rights are a central part of every city program.” With City Council approval, the commission recently placed the Human Rights City Project on its work plan (visit www.humanrightscity .com). Its purpose is to explore ways in which Eugene can infuse international human rights standards across city government operations.
The result may be a proposal to revise the existing Eugene human rights ordinance so as to enrich and expand the city’s human rights activities, make the city more proactive in addressing human rights issues, and create new partnerships to systematically identify local human rights problems and fashion solutions.
In order to open a conversation on these topics, the Human Rights Commission is presenting a symposium — “Bringing Human Rights Home: Implementing International Human Rights in the United States” — from 9 a.m. to noon Friday in Room 175 of the UO’s Knight Law Center, 1515 Agate St. The public is invited. For more information, call 682-5177.
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