ACLU Universal Periodic Review Submission

The American Civil Liberties Union welcomes the opportunity to provide information on the United States’ human rights record as part of the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR). This is the third time the United States will undergo scrutiny of its compliance with international human rights commitments and obligations. While the ACLU submission is mainly focusing on extreme and disproportionate punishments such as life sentences and the death penalty, we are deeply concerned about the unprecedented and dangerous regression in human and civil rights protections in the United States especially in the last three years. We hope this review will generate greater global and domestic action against, and resistance to, the United States damaging human rights policies at home and abroad.

Since the last United States review in 2015, there has been very little, if any, progress to meaningfully and directly implement the many important recommendations made by the Human Rights Council. Key recommendations which the United States, under the Obama administration, promised to adopt remain largely unimplemented. For example, the United States promised to conduct a study on the racial disparities in the imposition of the death penalty, seek alternatives to immigration detention, close Guantanamo, and end mandatory minimum sentences. Under the Trump Administration the United States has opted to ignore and often grossly violate international human rights norms especially in the context of immigration and asylum. The Trump Administration has also openly attacked multilateralism and international human rights and justice institutions, including threatening to prosecute judges and prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigating US war crimes in Afghanistan, and even subsequently revoked the U.S. visa of the ICC Chief Prosecutor.

Since the election of President Trump, the U.S. government has not extended official invitations to any Special Procedures to visit the United States. The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants has repeatedly asked to visit the United States to report on the serious deterioration of human rights of migrants especially on the U.S.-Mexico border. Currently perpetrated human rights abuses there include family separations, expedited deportations, abusive immigration detention, tear gassing of immigrants and asylum seekers, and the undermining of their rights to seek protection and asylum.

The Trump administration has also failed to respond to at least 26 communications sent by Special Procedures since January 2018. Furthermore, the United States has not submitted its periodic reports to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (the report was due November 2017) and to the UN Committee Against Torture (the report was due November 2018). It’s worth reminding Member States that the United States has only ratified 3 of the 9 core human rights treaties.

To make things worse, in July 2019, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the creation of a “Commission on Unalienable Rights.” Its stated purpose, according to an official notice, is to provide “fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.” References to “natural law and natural rights” are code words used by the religious right and social conservatives to advance anti-LGBTQ and anti-women’s rights agendas. We also know that members of the new commission have troubling anti-LGBTQ and abortion rights records.

Based on the Trump administration’s record, there is good reason to believe that the commission is intended to redefine universal human rights to fit the administration’s twisted and troubling worldview, with the clear and first target being the State Department’s long-standing work to advance the rights of LGBTQ people, women, and other vulnerable populations across the world. Secretary Pompeo’s commission is a dangerous initiative intended to redefine universal human rights and roll back decades of progress in achieving full rights for marginalized and historically oppressed communities. It is likely to use religion as grounds to deny human dignity and equality for all. It will undermine the existing State Department’s well respected and legally-mandated Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs. And it will be a waste of taxpayer dollars, which would be better spent on implementing U.S. human rights treaty obligations and putting an end to Trump’s era of human misery and assault on our humanity.

These issues raise serious concerns regarding the United States commitment to human rights and the international rule of law. They represent a dangerous attack on multilateral institutions and put the U.S. squarely in the company of some of the worst human rights abusers around the world. Moreover, these actions by the U.S. provide encouragement to other nations with poor human rights records to ignore and undermine the mandates and essential work of international human rights mechanisms and judicial bodies.

We call on the United States to change course and take concrete actions to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and resume full and meaningful cooperation with all human rights bodies, especially the U.N.’s Special Procedures, including facilitating official visits to the country.