'Shadow' human rights report to accuse United States of violating international human rights treaties
Larisa Alexandrovna - Raw Story

A scathing report submitted to the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee and copied to RAW STORY by a coalition of 142 U.S. non-governmental organizations alleges serious human rights violations by the United States. The report, which will be delivered to the UN Human Rights Committee July 10, alleges that the US violated the right to life and non-discrimination statutes of international human rights treaties to which the US is a signatory – citing evacuations based on income and property levels in New Orleans after Katrina, alleged abuse at California prisons and the incarceration of children in adult jails.

It also chides the US for capital punishment, which it says “allows for individuals to be sentenced to death, even if they did not kill, intend to kill, or even contemplate that another human being would die as a result of their actions.”

The “shadow report,” as non-governmental rebuttals to state presentations are called, was leaked to RAW STORY early Wednesday. Its authors believed the 456-page document is a blistering indictment of U.S. violations of the 1992 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Representatives of the State Department and other federal agencies are expected to appear in Geneva in July to answer questions from the UN committee. Department of State Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs John Bellinger is scheduled to appear on behalf of the United States. Bellinger was not immediately available for comment.

According to Cindy Soohoo, Director of Bringing Human Rights Home for the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, shadow reports provide a window into what the Committee would otherwise not be privy to.

"The Committee welcomes shadow reports because they provide information about country conditions that the Committee does not have access to,” SooHoo said Wednesday. “The shadow reports often provide information that challenge or supplement a country's report. This allows the Committee to probe behind countries' official accounts.”

The UN Human Rights Committee meets twice a year and reviews state sponsored reports every four years. The government report is then examined against a “shadow report,” a non-governmental report done usually by not-for profit groups of the parent country. Since 1994, the U.S. has failed to honor its treaty obligations and has failed to produce any type of report for the routine review, breaking its international obligation for the last seven years.

The shadow report provided to the Committee for review later this month by the coalition addresses areas of immediate concern, citing as examples over 100 instances of alleged human rights violations and covering areas ranging from immigration to Katrina, alleged election-based racism and the criminalization of dissent.

Alleged Katrina human rights violations

Part of the shadow report deals specifically with how minorities were treated prior to, during, and after Hurricane Katrina, the storm that literally drowned New Orleans last year and took over a thousand lives.

The report alleges the U.S. violated the right to life and principle of non-discrimination statues of the ICCPR treaty. For example, it cites evacuation plans that disregarded the poor and infirm and allegedly focused evacuations based on property ownership and income levels, drastically damaging the African American community in New Orleans.

Monique Harden, Co-Director & Attorney, Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, and a member of the shadow report coalition, said Katrina failures violated the treaty as well as basic human rights.

"Katrina exposed the fact that our US government failed to protect lives,” Harden said. “Ten months after the storm, our government is failing to protect the right to return to Gulf Coast residents who need housing and a comprehensive rebuilding. We strongly believe that by bringing international pressure through the ICCPR hearings, our government will realize the importance of protecting the human rights of our families and neighbors in the gulf region.”

According the US Human Rights Campaign, New Orleans residents were seemingly stripped of their citizenship status and described as refugees, denying them the rights of displaced persons status.

Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network Ajamu Baraka says government neglect was directly responsible for loss of life and issues surrounding displaced persons.

Examples, she said, included “failure of the government to prevent the unnecessary loss of life by shoring up the levee system in New Orleans to withstand a category three hurricane and above. This failure resulted in the loss of over 1,500 lives.”

“As a result of government negligence and failure to establish an effective evacuation plan that would have addressed more than 100,000 people in New Orleans who were transit dependent, the government has re-traumatized individuals by providing inconsistent assistance and by cutting off housing assistance to thousands of displaced persons who still lack permanent housing,” Baraka added.

Internationally displaced persons are those who have been forced from their homes because of domestic strife, natural disasters and other external events. UN principles list those with displaced persons status as having basic human rights to shelter, medical treatment, right to life, liberty, security and protection during their displacement.

Yet according to a March, 2006 report by Oxfam, 750,000 households remain displaced, roughly a year since Katrina ravaged the area the area.

The irony, Soohoo says, is that the U.S. State Department has “recognized that these principles should be applied to [displaced persons] in other countries, and they have been adopted by USAID Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons policy,” but doesn’t apply the same standard domestically.

In Katrina-battered New Orleans, the report describes the April 2006 election in Orleans Parish, where tens of thousands of African American voters displaced by the storm were denied access to facilities and equipment. The report criticizes the US for failing to take appropriate measures and actions to accommodate the displaced residents of New Orleans and allegedly denying them the right to vote.