Well, a draft of the final report by the UN Human Rights Committee with regard to US compliance to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights has been published. Its conclusions with regard to our compliance are not favorable. Not only does the report address the war on terrorism issues, it also concludes that we have problems with regard to racial discrimination, prisons, illegal immigrants, Indian rights, women workers, police brutality, medical experimentation, representation of DC residents and gay people. It sounds like an indictment that we are not abiding by our own Constitution. It is a discouraging document to read and forces one to ask the question of what kind of a nation have we become.
This is not a problem only of the Bush administration. The report we submitted relative to our compliance was seven years late; i.e., the Clinton administration did not meet its obligations in terms of the timeliness of submitting a report either.
Not only did we submit the report late but we "refused to address certain serious allegations of violations of rights" and we did not provide "information on the implementation of the Covenant in respect of individuals under its jurisdiction and outside its territory".
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