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U.S. Vows Transparency Before U.N. Human Rights Committee

Alexander G. Higgins
Associated Press
July 17, 2006

GENEVA (AP) - U.S. officials said Monday they would be as forthcoming as possible with a U.N. committee reviewing Washington's human rights record, even though they claim some of the issues are outside its mandate.

Issues expected to arise range from treatment of detainees in the war on terror to domestic concerns including racism, the death penalty and abortion.

The U.S. delegation, as a courtesy, will answer questions about acts committed in the war on terrorism outside the United States even though they fall outside Washington's obligations under the main international human rights treaty, said Mark Lagon, deputy assistant secretary of State.

High on the list of questions from the U.N. Human Rights Committee in the two days of hearings are doubts about Washington's counterterrorism efforts, including interrogation methods involving hooding, stress positions, mock drownings, the forced removal of religious attire and use of dogs.

Matthew Waxman of the U.S. State Department, who is heading the delegation of about 25 people, said the United States intended to be open before the panel.

"All nations should be subject to scrutiny," he said.

In May, the top U.N. anti-torture panel recommended the closure of the U.S. detention center for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and criticized alleged U.S. use of secret prisons and suspected delivery of prisoners to foreign countries for questioning.

"Our hope is that the human rights committee ... will not try to hold the United States to a higher standard than some of the other governments which it has reviewed in the last five years, which have included Syria, Egypt, Russia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and North Korea," Lagon said.

Amnesty International said it had raised a number of issues, including the death penalty, supermaximum security prisons and life sentences for those who committed crimes as juveniles.

There are more than 2,200 people currently serving life sentences in the United States, with no possibility of parole, for crimes committed when they were under 18, according to a study by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. There are only 12 other such cases in the rest of the world.

The Rev. Lois Dejean, a New Orleans resident, came to the hearings because she said the U.S. government had ignored the human rights of African-American inhabitants of the city before and after Hurricane Katrina struck last year.

"We have scores of communities in New Orleans and across the Gulf coast region that look like Hurricane Katrina passed through yesterday," Dejean said. "Our lives mean nothing to our government."

All countries that have ratified the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights must submit periodic reports to the 18 independent experts on the committee detailing their compliance. The United States' 120-page report was filed almost seven years late.

Robert Harris, assistant State Department legal adviser, said the United States was late because of the complexity of compiling the report on such a range of issues, but hopes to be punctual in the future.

Criticism by the panel brings no penalties beyond international scrutiny. The committee is expected to issue conclusions before it wraps up its session July 28.

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