My Take | Why US is among world’s worst domestic human rights violators
- It’s foreign policy when Washington slams others for alleged violations, but foreign propaganda when America is seen as being the culprit
It takes chutzpah to attack others for human rights violations when you are guilty of breaching those of your own population. That’s why it’s both infuriating and amusing to listen to Washington’s lectures and sanctions against other countries, including China. When you were the biggest dog in the neighbourhood, your barks could bite. But that habit needs to change when your place at the top is starting to crumble.
Consider poverty. The January census shows 11.6 per cent of Americans, or almost 38 million, live below the poverty line in the world’s wealthiest country. How does that compute? The only explanation is that society’s riches generated by the economy have gone disproportionately to the richest, while the poor just get poorer.
Poverty is, of course, closely linked to homelessness, drug abuse, and lack of healthcare. These are structural chronic problems that cannot be addressed by some politician or party just by voting the current ones out of office.
Poverty is a human rights violation according to the United Nations. Its Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights ranks freedom from poverty on par with “civil and political rights, such as the right to a fair trial, political participation and security of the person”.
“No social phenomenon,” it said, “is as comprehensive in its assault on human rights as poverty. Poverty erodes economic and social rights such as the right to health, adequate housing, food and safe water, and the right to education.”
Worsening poverty makes the United States a rights violator.
Now, consider forced labour, which the US has accused China of committing and against which it has imposed unilateral sanctions.
