Human Rights at Home Blog

Event 12/5: IAOHRA Human Rights Day Event

On December 5^th, 2023, from 1-2:30P.M. EST, join the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies for a webinar in celebration of International Human Rights Day. The featured speakers will be Dr. Domenico Zipol and Dr. Rodrigo A. Carazo.

The mission of the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies (IAOHRA) is to provide opportunities and forums for the exchange of ideas and information among member agencies and other human rights advocates.

IAOHRA assists in developing programs for eliminating illegal discrimination in employment, housing, education, public accommodations, public services, and commercial transactions, including banking and lending practices.

We develop educational programs on human rights and civil rights issues and serve as a clearinghouse for information exchange between human rights agencies around the world.

This event is virtual. Register for this webinar here.

U.N. Human Rights Committee Offers Critical Recommendations for Transgender Rights in the United States

 

 

 

 

 

 

By: Nic Stelter, Student Fellow & Tamar Ezer, Acting Director Human Rights Clinic, University of Miami School of Law

As we mark the end of Transgender Awareness Month, the United States needs to take a hard look at rampant discrimination against transgender communities. Since 2019, laws violating transgender rights have swept the country:

• 14 states limit discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in schools and prohibit the use of transgender students’ names and pronouns.
• In 9 states, transgender individuals are prohibited from using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity in schools, as well other public spaces in some cases.
• 22 states ban at least some forms of gender-affirming health care for children, and 5 of these states punish gender-affirming care as a felony.
• In 23 states, transgender students are banned from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity.
• We’ve seen book bans double with 45.5% of books targeted written by or about LGBTQ+ individuals.

Moreover, lawmakers have introduced over 500 more bills limiting transgender rights in just the last year.

Our Human Rights Clinic had the opportunity to support a coalition, including Human Rights Watch, Equality Florida, Florida Health Justice Project, Southern Legal Counsel, and Southern Poverty Law Center in advocacy before the United Nations (U.N.) Human Rights Committee, as it reviewed the U.S. for compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This included submission of a shadow report on human rights violations against transgender communities, development of a factsheet, and oral presentations to the Committee.

Earlier this month, the Human Rights Committee released its Concluding Observations and underscored with concern “the increase of state legislation that severely restricts the rights of persons based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.” Additionally, it pointed to hate crimes and prevalent discrimination in access to housing, employment, and other services. The Committee found violations of the rights to equality and non-discrimination; freedom of expression; privacy; family; life; and freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

To prevent these abuses, the Human Rights Committee urged the U.S. to “adopt all measures necessary to ensure that state laws that discriminate against persons based on their sexual orientation and gender identity are repealed and that comprehensive legislative initiatives prohibiting discrimination on those grounds . . . are adopted at the federal, state, local and territorial levels.” The Committee further called on the U.S. to investigate harassment and violence against transgender individuals and make sure that “perpetrators are brought to justice and victims are provided with effective remedies and redress.”

It is time for the U.S. to heed the Committee’s recommendations. Its findings, as Human Rights Watch noted, are “a wake-up call for state and federal lawmakers.” As one of our partners, a former teacher and transgender resident of Florida, poignantly stated, “Trans people are humans too and deserve to live in this country.” Let’s make the U.S a place where everyone can live with dignity. We hope the Concluding Observations can serve as a tool in pushing this forward.

News: UN Special Rapporteur Calls Out U.S. and Three Major Corporations, for “Trapping Workers in Poverty”

Three of the largest corporations in the world - Amazon, DoorDash, and Walmart - received letters from the UN Special Rapporteur for extreme poverty and human rights on August 31, 2023, in which he called them out for their treatment of workers. The Special Rapporteur specifically referenced Amazon and Walmart’s union-busting activities, which has hampered the ability of workers to utilize their right to collective bargaining and better their conditions, pay, and benefits, and DoorDash’s insistence that their delivery drivers are independent contractors rather than employees, which denies them traditional employment benefits such as minimum wage guarantees. He also referenced a U.S. government report which stated that employees from these companies are among the highest recipients of government medical and food assistance, arguing that employers have a responsibility to give their employees a path out of poverty, instead of relying on government assistance to justify paying their workers the lowest wages possible. 

The Special Rapporteur also wrote to the United States government on August 31, 2023, going through all of the allegations against all of these companies and requesting information on its plans to address the widespread in-work poverty in the country. “The allegations against Amazon, DoorDash and Walmart would constitute flagrant violations of these rights and it is time for these corporations, and the U.S. Government, to be held accountable,” he said.

Read more about this topic here. Find the original letters from the Special Rapporteur and the responses from Amazon and Walmart here.

News: UN Special Rapporteur on Racism Issues Statement Following United States Visit

The UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Ashwini K.P, has issued her official statement following her two-week visit to the United States this past month. She visited Washington D.C., Detroit, MI, Flint, MI, Los Angeles CA, Baton Rouge, LA, and Atlanta, GA, where she met with federal and state authorities, individuals from racial and ethnic groups, civil society organizations, service providers, academics, and other stakeholders to get a full picture of the state of racism in the United States.

In her press conference on November 14, 2023, Ashwini implored the U.S. government to “increase its efforts to address enduring systemic racism,” and expressed shock at how deeply the system of racism runs in every state she visited, and how these systems continue to reinforce themselves. She cited testimonies she received from members of racially marginalized groups, which detailed voter disenfranchisement, homelessness, environmental racism, racially discriminatory food systems, inequitable healthcare and health outcomes and discriminatory migration governance systems. Ashwani warned that the U.S. needs to increase and improve its anti-racism efforts, and further address white supremacy, underlying power imbalances, and historical drivers of racism and racial discrimination.

Read the UN’s press release here. Read the Special Rapporteur’s full statement here.  

New Article: A Global View of U.S. Backsliding on Democracy and Reproductive Rights

Martha F. Davis and Risa Kaufman, A Global View of U.S. Backsliding on Democracy and Reproductive Rights, ACS Blogs, Expert Forum (Nov. 13, 2023). Excerpt below.

This month, the United Nations Human Rights Committee concluded its review of the United States’ human rights record. Nine years had passed since the Committee’s last review of the U.S. With many urgent issues to address – including gun violence, excessive use of force by law enforcement, climate change, and Guantanamo – the Committee trained particular focus on the state of reproductive rights and democracy in the United States. The Committee’s alarm over the flood of restrictions on reproductive and bodily autonomy, alongside its deep concern over attacks on the right to vote, points to the deep connections between reproductive rights and democracy. Americans have a front row view of these connections in the wake of the Supreme Court majority’s decision in Dobbs to eliminate federal constitutional protections for abortion and leave the issue up to the political branches and the states. The global perspective offered by the UN review is a reminder, however, that regression on reproductive rights reinforces and supports erosion of democracy. These are mutually reinforcing trends. And the UN review underscores the urgency of safeguarding both.

Event 11/17: Race and National Security

On Friday, November 17, please join the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law and the Gibson-Banks Center for Race and the Law for a conference and book launch for Race and National Security, in which leading experts challenge conventional interpretations of national security by illuminating the underpinning of White supremacy in our social consciousness.

Race and National Security centers the experience of those who have long been on the receiving end of racialized state violence. It finds that re-envisioning national security requires more than just reducing the size and scope of the security state. Race and National Security invites us to radically reimagine a world where the security state does not keep Black, Brown, and other marginalized peoples subordinated through threats of and actual incarceration, violence, torture, and death. Speakers will challenge national security orthodoxy and disrupts accepted truths. This conversation will bring together in one conference domestic, transnational, and comparative and international law perspectives on racial justice and national security.

The conference will be in-person only for the most part, with one panel to be broadcast virtually as well. This panel will be on the topic of Race & its Effects on National and Transnational Security and will take place from 11:30 A.M to 1:00 P.M ET. The panelists will be Chaz Arnett, E. Tendayi Achiume, Monica C. Bell, Khaled A Beydoun, Maryam Jamshidi, Catherine Powell, and Aziz Rana.

Registration is free. The organizers kindly request all RSVPs by November 14. Register for the event here.

Event 11/10: Constitutionalizing Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Webinar

On November 10, 2023, from 12:00-1:30pm CST, join the Northeastern University Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy and the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota Law School for a webinar on Constitutionalizing Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, as part of the UN Human Rights's Hernan Santa Cruz Dialogues Series on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

This conversation will explore the various ways in which Economic, Social and Cultural (ESC) rights are (or are not) embedded in national or subnational constitutions. Speakers will share experiences with constitutional drafting as well as thoughts about constitutional construction, and the role of international human rights law in those processes. An overarching focus will be on the impacts of constitutionalizing ESC rights. 

The event will feature invited experts: Katie Boyle, Professor of Human Rights Law and Social Justice at the University of Strathclyde and constitutional lawyer with the Government Legal Service for Scotland; Denisse Córdova Montes, Acting Associate Director in the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law; Jacqueline Dugard, Senior Lecturer in the discipline of Human Rights and Political Science at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Department of Political Science, Columbia University; and Domingo Lovera-Parmo, Associate Professor of law at Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile.

The panel will be moderated by Martha Davis, Northeastern University Distinguished Professor of Law, and Amanda Lyons, Executive Director, Human Rights Center at University of Minnesota Law School.

To register for this event, click here.