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The
U.S.'s misuse of the United Nations
By
Jonathan
Power
October 4, 2002
LONDON - In last month's speech to the UN General
Assembly President George Bush spoke of "broken treaties"
and UN resolutions being "unilaterally subverted". Yet
the United States has one of the worst records of all
when it comes to bypassing or subverting important UN
resolutions. The U.S. has a long history of continuing to
use international law when it works in its favour and to
discredit it when it is not.
For example, the U.S. filed suit against Iran before
the International Court of Justice (the World Court) for
taking U.S. diplomats as hostages. Yet, only four years
later, when Nicaragua took the U.S. to the World Court
for mining the harbour of its principal port the U.S.
refused to accept the court's jurisdiction. In 1988 the
World Court ordered that an execution of a Paraguayan
citizen in the U.S. be suspended. It argued that under
the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the
U.S. is a party, the accused had the right to seek
assistance from Paraguayan consular officials, which had
been denied. Five days later, ignoring the Court, the
state authorities in Virginia proceeded with the
execution. A similar case was the execution of a Mexican
in Texas in 1997. He too was denied consular access.
After his execution Governor George Bush stated that
since Texas had not signed the Vienna Convention on
Consular Relations it was not bound by it.
The U.S. has the worst record of any Western country,
not only in observing international human rights
treaties, but also in ratifying them. And often
ratification when it finally passes through Congress is
saddled with reservations. The Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (later
used by Washington to justify its campaign against the
"ethnic cleansing" policies of Slobodan Milosevic of
Yugoslavia) was ratified by Congress in 1988, 40 years
after the U.S. signed it. The U.S. took 28 years to
ratify the International Convention on All forms Of
Racial Discrimination after 133 other states had already
ratified it. Similarly, 71 states ratified the Convention
Against Torture before the US decided to do so. It was 26
years before the U.S. ratified the International
Convention on Civil Rights, an instrument which it waged
a long campaign to persuade China to sign up to, and
which it now uses to upbraid China's human rights abuses.
Only two countries in the world have not ratified the
Convention on the Rights of the Child - the U.S. and the
collapsed state of Somalia.
The U.S. has been particularly adept at watering down
the commitments it has made. For example, it has declared
that it will apply the International Covenant Against
Torture only to the extent that domestic law allows. It
has also made informal reservations on the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, even though some
of them are contrary to the object and aims of the
treaty. Article 6.5 of the Covenant prohibits passing a
death sentence on anyone under the age of 18 at the time
of their crime. Yet the U.S. has entered a
reservation.
Amnesty International has just released two grim
reports on child executions. They argue that the U.S.
continues to defy the United Nations and to flout
international law. "Two thirds of the known child
executions in the past decade were carried out in the
USA. It is clear that the U.S. is the world's leading
perpetrator of this universally condemned human rights
violation". In the state of Louisiana seven people are on
death row awaiting execution for crimes committed when
they were 16 or 17.
Since 1993 Amnesty has documented 24 executions of
children - one in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
one in Nigeria, one in Yemen two in Pakistan, three in
Iran and 16 in the U.S.. Pakistan and Yemen have since
announced they will abolish the use of the death penalty
in such cases, as has China, the world's principal
execution state.
At the same time that the U.S. is (rightly) trying to
pressure Iraq to abide by UN resolutions it is engaged in
all out attempt to undermine one of the UN's most
important recent creations, the International Criminal
Court to try crimes against humanity. Despite President
Clinton having signed the statute creating the Court, the
Bush Administration has waged war against it. This week
the European Union, subjected to withering pressure by
the U.S., appear to have decided to allow individual
European countries to sign "impunity agreements" with the
U.S. to exempt American military or official personnel
from prosecution by the court. But what is sauce for the
goose is good for the gander. Why should other countries
not exempt their nationals? The legitimacy of the Court
is undermined before it even opens its doors. Such is the
depth of the U.S. respect for the solemn international
will to find a suitable way of trying and punishing the
world's worst criminals.
For many years now the U.S. has worked to effectively
undermine the writ of the United Nations. How ironic that
it seems that Washington, apropos of Iraq, is demanding
that its other members now live up to its Charter.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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