Human Rights Record of the US in 2003

The Chinese' own report_

Published on March 2, 2004 By EMacy In Politics

China speaks up against the US' annual report with their own human right's report card for Uncle Sam.

China Thursday expressed its "strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition'' to the annual human rights report of the United States, which accuses China of "backsliding'' on human rights.
So China published it's own report on the US record of Human Rights over 2003.

Full text of Human Rights Record of the US in 2003
Excerpt begins:
III. On Living Conditions of US Laborers
Although the United States is the world's No. one developed nation, the US government has to date refused to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Itis apathetic to the rights and interests of ordinary workers in economic, social and cultural aspects, leading to serious problemssuch as poverty, hunger and homelessness.

The disparity between the rich and the poor keep widening in the United States. A 2003 report by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the US Congress acknowledged that the gap between the rich and the poor in the country today is wider than anytime in nearly 70 years, with the wealth of the country's richest one percent population exceeding the overall possessions of the needy, who account for 40 percent of the total population. In 2000, the rich people's wealth makes up 15.5 percent of the country's overall national income, as against 7.5 percent in 1979 (according to BBC report on Sept. 25, 2003).

A report by the US Federal Reserve also showed that between 1998 and 2001, the wealth gap between the country's richest and poorest had widened by 70 percent (see Britain's Guardian report on Jan. 24, 2003).

Certain policies of the US government, instead of helping narrowing the country's wealth gap, have aggravated the rich-poor disparity and led to an unfair distribution of wealth. According to a report by the US Environmental Working Group in 2003, the agricultural policy of the US government has ensured 70 percent ofthe government subsidies go to ranch owners, resulting in a yawning income gap between ranch owners and ordinary farmers and pushing many farmers to the verge of bankruptcy (ABC report on Oct.9, 2003).

The population living in need and hunger in the United States has been on a steady rise. According to statistics from the 2003 economic report of the US Census Bureau, the impoverished population in the United States had been increasing for two consecutive years, reaching 34.6 million, or 12.1 percent of the total population, in 2002, up 1.7 million over the previous year. The country's poverty ratio in 2002 had risen by 0.4 percentage points over the previous year. Among the impoverished population, the number of extremely needy people had risen to 14.1 million from the previous 13.4 million, and the proportion of children in need had gone up to 16.7 percent in 2002 from 16.3 percent in 2001.Since 2001, the number of needy families in the United States has been growing at 6 percent a year, and there are now 7.3 million impoverished families in the country, which means 31 million people are facing the threat of hunger. In the 25 leading metropolises of the United States, the number of people who need emergency food aid has increased by 19 percent on average, while the number of people who live on charity food coupons, or those who have to queue up for free food distributions, has surged to 22million (see Spain's El Mundo on May 19, 2003).

In October 2003, the US Department of Agriculture released a report, which showed that in 2002 there were 12 million American families worrying about their food expenditures and 3.8 million families with members who actually suffered from hunger. On December 18, 2003, an annual survey report released at the US Conference of Mayors showed that in the 25 cities surveyed, the number of people seeking emergency food aid in 2003 had increased by 17 percent on average over 2002. Moreover, 87 percent of the surveyed cities believed that the number of such people would continue to rise in 2004.

The homeless population continues to rise. According to information released by the US National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, more than 3 million people were homeless in the United States in 2002 (Homeless and Poverty in America, www.nlchp.org). Washington D.C. has the highest rate of homelessness of any city in the United States, with an estimated 20,000 people having experienced homelessness and nearly 400 families having applied for emergency shelters in 2002 (A snapshot of Homelessness in the Metropolitan, www.naeh.org). In April of 2002 alone, 38,476 people in New York spent their night in aid centers, including 16,685 children. According to a survey released by the US Conference of Mayors in December 2003, requests for emergency shelter assistance rose by an average of 13 percent in the past year; 88 percent of the cities surveyed predicted that the situation would be even worse in 2004.

Recently, the US Christian Science Monitor reminded the United States that it should regard "a home for every American" as the most rudimentary human right. Chicago Coalition for the Homeless said the government was unable to provide the basic subsistence guarantee for people, and that the local government had violated international human rights law by forcibly taking over 8,000 local residential houses in five years.
........ read-on...

(This is my point: How does America expect other countries to improve their Human Right's when " taking care of their own" seems an impossible task?
Doesn't seem hypocritical to ask other countries to do what you yourself are unwilling to do_that is provide basic human rights for all_because, we are, after all_ equal.)

Comments (Page 2)

Aaron Brandt

on Mar 04, 2004

Thanks BakerStreet. I totally missed what you were saying until I stumbled onto your post. Sorry.

bakerstreet

on Mar 04, 2004

Aaron: No problem.

For the poverty scale and such, look at the comments on that article. The muckrakers have posted them, lol.

Solitair

on Mar 08, 2004

The charter on Human rights links the economic rights of individuals to the average economic state of that country. If you take 'poor' Americans and placed them in China or Mongolia or India or Russia or Somalia then they may indeed be middle class or even wealthy in that society. They are still defined as poor in the US though.

Minds far greater than ours debated these very issues back at the foundation of the UN and decided that poverty was indeed relative, but should still be eliminated by each country based on it's own economy. All members of the UN agreed with this and undertook to eliminate poverty. It's not the wealth of the poor that's the isue but the relative wealth.

Of course if Americans today disagree and feel that their poor should not be so classified then they could always try to renegotiate the treaty

Paul.

WiseFawn

on Mar 08, 2004

BakerStreet - If being a muckracker is someone who tells than thruth, than muckracker, I'll be. You guys are big on labeling people, aren't you?

WiseFawn

on Mar 08, 2004

the truth, dammit

WiseFawn

on Mar 08, 2004

Our Mission
Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institute - a think tank - whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

The site that BakerStreet got his poverty stats from. Speaks for itself.

bakerstreet

on Mar 08, 2004

WiseFawn: That is too much. The Chinese government isn't biased, but the Heritage foundation is. You commonly post from mother jones, the Sierra blub, alternet, blah. You use sources easily as biased.

E.Macy says that America has lost it's moral right to preach, and then reprints the preaching of the Chinese government.

Solitair

on Mar 09, 2004

Bakerstreet,
of course China doesn't have any moral authority to preach. E.Macy does not suggest that it does. Read the final paragraph of the article again. The point is 'how can America expect people to take it's comments on human rights seriously when it has so many abuses itself"?

The sad truth is that China does indded have huge human right abuses as pointed out in the US report, but no one cares about what the US says on human rights issues. Have you seen anyone quote the US report yet? It's actually very informative.

paul.

Aaron Brandt

on Mar 09, 2004

WiseFawn are you telling me that an organization that admits to being somewhat biased can't find useful information? Last I checked there is absolutely no source that isn't biased, whether they admit it or not, and therefore no statistics in the world are accurate. China wrote the initial report that you don't seem to have a problem with and I'm pretty sure they may be biased toward oh....communism.
China
The country that E. Macy got his poverty stats from. Speaks for itself.

Draginol

on Mar 10, 2004

What major world power, either past or present, should the US emulate?

It's all relative. Should we follow the Roman Empire's example? Or maybe the Soviet Union's? Or Nazi Germany's? Or Napoleonic France? Or the British Empire?

People who complain that the US record on human rights isn't perfect always seem to be comparing it to some imaginary Utopian society. And even then, we wouldn't agree on what exactly is a human right. I consider gun ownership a human right for instance. I consider the government eliminating from society murderers and rapists via capital punishment a human right. Obviously someone like E. Macy would disagree.

But he'll have to excuse us if we're not convinced that his views are universal views. The US is a democracy. The rights we have are the ones we choose to grant ourselves.

jeblackstar

on Mar 10, 2004

Roman Empire, I've always thought they did it best.

Cheers

bakerstreet

on Mar 10, 2004

Roman Empire, I've always thought they did it best.

, well, then. By this time in our history we would have made states out of all of North and South America, and we'd be keeping Iraq permanently. Rome didn't spend billions invading nations only to turn them back over to the original inhabitants.

SHOCKWARRIOR

on Mar 10, 2004

Human Rights are tricky... you can't even get people to agree what they are. What are my rights as a human being?
Do I have the right to defend myself and my family from harm using any means...Do I have the right to eat, even if I can't afford to...Do I have the right to raise my children as I see fit...Do I have the right to work where ever I want to?

A burglar breaks into my house, I shoot him, he lives, he sues me, he ends up taking from me more than he could have carried out of my house...

I lose my job and have no money to eat, I shoplift food, it contributes to a higher cost of living (stolen items get averaged into pricing), I feel badly, I go on Welfare, it contributes to a higher cost of living (government programs are paid for by TAXES, the more that is spent the higher the tax, the less you take home to buy food)...

I believe spare the rod spoil the child, my child misbehaves, I spank my child, a neighbor call the police, child protective services tells me if I spank again my child will go to foster-care, I stop spanking , without fear of punishment my child's behavior gets worse, after numerous arrests CPS removes my child from my home because I cannot control his behavior...

I am a minority or have a "non-traditional lifestyle" , I apply at a company that doesn't like my "kind", they refuse to hire me even though I am the most qualified applicant, I sue, I win, they are forced to hire me, now I work where I am not wanted and my quality of life suffers (this one is kind of weak as an example but I threw it in anyway).

My point is there is no Black and White, everthing is relative. For every action that is WRONG you can find a loophole. Hell you can KILL someone in self defense or in war and be congratulated.

jeblackstar

on Mar 10, 2004

Actually, if I were a good lawyer, and I was a very good lawyer, if you killed someone in self defense, I'd either have you behind bars, or walking free.

Also, there is a difference between spanking and beating. A rod is a weapon, using it on a child is assault. A hand can also be a weapon. If you're the type of person who doesn't know when their hand has stopped being a disciplinary tool and become a weapon, you shouldn't spank. Oh, and there are plenty of ways to discipline a child without spanking them. My father used to count to three. When I was in my twenties I asked him what would happen if he ever got to three, he told me he didn't know because he'd never had to get that far.

Cheers

Solitair

on Mar 10, 2004

Actually I like to compare any modern country with the human rights it promised to uphold when it signed the UN charter. Call me old fashioned but I tend to believe that countries should uphold the treaties they sign and the ideals those treaties stand for.

As for comparing with historical countries or empires, the concept of human rights is always changing. To compare against what was acceptable in Roman or even British Emprie times would be foolish. The US should not try to emulate another previosu power, but should have the courage and integrity to stand on its own merits and uphold the human rights it chose to accept.

Paul.

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