Human Rights, Sovereignty, and States Rights

As you probably know, the Executive Branch of Government negotiates international standards setting instruments and for international conventions (which are considered international treaties under U.S. law when ratified) decides on when to submit them to the Congress for Senate ratification. Both the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch are properly concerned with the protection of U.S. national sovereignty in the negotiation of international treaties and conventions.

When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being negotiates six decades ago, the United States delegation, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, was reluctant to negotiate a related convention because it was (correctly) believed that it would be hard to get the Congress to vote for a human rights convention, especially because of the southern Senators' insistence on "states' rights". In fact it took some three decades for the first conventions giving treaty status to aspects of the Universal Declaration to come into force.

"States' Rights" was the banner used by the southern states to protect their legislation imposing racial discrimination and racism as well as other violations of human rights. Ours is a country that has been torturing prisoners, which treats teen-agers accused of crimes as adults, and which has refused to ratify the convention protecting the rights of women.

Perhaps our citizens need international conventions that protect them from the abuses of their human rights that take place in and by this country. Who says that sovereignty trumps human rights?

Certainly there are situations in other countries where the world should intervene to protect people -- Darfur, the Central African Republic, Southern Sudan and Somalia all come to mind. We can't police the world, but we should be able to do more.

Of course by ratifying the full set of international conventions supporting human rights this country would be opening itself to criticism by Cuba, Russia, and other countries that differ with us on many fundamental issues. How bad would that be? Perhaps we might take better care of human rights to avoid such criticism.