The other day, I thought I’d check out the United Nation Human Rights Commission’s report on the United States’ human rights record, part of its Universal Periodic Review process. I was hoping they’d included something on shrinking space for civil society due to overbroad counterterrorism laws and policies.
Hmmmm …. it wasn’t there. The report made room for 348 recommendations and there wasn’t one mention of shrinking space for civil society. Weird. I must have missed it. So I checked again. … Nope.
It’s not like they weren’t aware of the problem. The Charity & Security Network submitted comments to the UPR, endorsed by a dozen U.S. nonprofits, recommending that the “U.S. engage civil society in a realignment of its national security and counterterrorism laws in order to remove legal restrictions on speech and association aimed at reducing armed conflict, lower barriers to humanitarian access to civilians in armed conflict and improve its redress process for terrorist lists.” So it’s fair to say the issue has been on the UN’s radar. Staff also presented these issues in person at a State Department sponsored civil society convening in the fall of 2014.
After the last UPR in 2011, the UN recommended that the U.S. “[m]ake fully consistent all domestic anti-terrorism legislation and action with human rights standards” and that it “[r]eview its laws at the Federal & State levels with a view to bring them in line with its international obligations.” Neither of those recommendations has been implemented, and they were not reiterated in the recent UPR. According to Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, co-director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program, the U.S. is an active participant in the UPR, “but the last set of recommendations resulted in zero domestic reforms.” Speaking at an April forum in New York on the UPR, she suggested that the U.S. government undermines human rights standards and that the lack of responsiveness on previous recommendations “could undermine the review’s credibility going forward.”
With the U.S. taking its counterterrorism strategies abroad, it’s curious that the laws and policies squeezing civil society here at home didn’t merit a single mention in this year’s UPR.