Wednesday, July 27, 2016
The Democratic Party Platform and US Human Rights
"Women's rights are human rights," Hillary Clinton famously declared at the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women. More than twenty years later, the Democratic Party Platform adopted earlier this week follows through on this proposition. According to the Platform:
"Democrats are committed to advancing the rights and opportunities of women and girls as a central focus of American diplomacy, development, and defense efforts and will continue to support the United States National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security. We will work to end the epidemic of gender-based violence around the world. We will urge ratification of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women."
The Platform further states that "LGBT are human rights," endorsing the importance of that principle in foreign as well as domestic policy. Democrats reject torture as a human rights violation and pledge to close Guantanamo.
But in the lengthy passages addressing domestic policy, the human rights framework is in the background at best. Democrats include a strong pledge to expand health care, but identify it as a "fundamental right," without invoking the human rights norms that support this right. Democrats focus in on the corrosive effect of the racial wealth gap and its devastating impact on democratic processes at home, but stop short of identifying the issue as a human rights issue that the US must own and address as a matter of global justice.
In a platform that repeatedly recognizes values and truths that have resonance in both domestic values and international human rights norms, only the former are highlighted. In short, for US human rights advocates, it's a glass half full.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/human_rights/2016/07/the-democratic-party-platform-and-us-human-rights.html