Upcoming soon, the UN Member States will convene in the General Assembly to discuss the adoption of an international instrument to ensure justice for victims of violations of economic, social, and cultural rights “who cannot get a remedy at the national level” (Amnesty). Amnesty has the following to say:
“This is clear and concrete action to implement the declaration made fifteen years ago at the Vienna World Conference that ‘all human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis,’” said Duncan Wilson, Amnesty International’s senior policy expert on economic, social and cultural rights.
To me this all seems strange. Why, being so trivial of an issue fundamentally, are human rights ignored worldwide? One can argue about customs and culture, or sexism, or religion, but when it comes down to it, one of the major violators of human rights is the United States, particularly under George Bush. After 9/11, the Geneva conventions were thrown aside by legal ambiguities and “prisoners of war” were indeed tortured and held captive with no hope of escape (Guantanamo Bay is a great example).
Matthew Good talks about the different forms of torture and how George Bush’s administration has side-stepped “physical torture” and gone for mental torture. The above picture is a very old form of torture which removes all of ones senses for a period of time. Good mentions that “sensory deprivation can easily result in a permanent state of psychosis after a minimum of six to eight days”. This is all done by the ‘greatest’ country in the world! We all hear about the things happening in third world countries, but we NEVER hear of these things happening on U.S. soil. When I read this article by Good, I died a little inside. Thankfully, the UN is stepping forward with a new measure for victims of human rights violations. I’m not sure, however, if the United States will follow the new regulations (if they are imposed).
They sure didn’t when they entered Iraq on March 20, 2003.
