AHR Shadow Reports
The Child Soldier: US WILPF and the US Government
The Child Soldier: US WILPF and the US Government
DAY ONE:
Could any of us have imagined this face-off over the child soldier issue six years ago? At the same time, within this treaty review process, US democracy has seemed to awaken.
In this scenario, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, based in Geneva Switzerland, called on the US government to testify before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
This periodical formal question and answer also occurs with other countries who signed the UN Convention on the Child that the US has not signed. But it did write and sign the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.
WILPF to UN: Stop Military Recruitment in US schools!
“The nearly 14,000 boys and girls who actually sign up for military service represent only a tiny fraction of the youths targeted annually by military recruiters who have become an ominous presence in elementary schools, junior and high schools across the country where students as young as 11 can participate in Cadet and Training Corps. These are military funded school programs in which military instructors teach students about uniform inspection and drills (including ones using wooden guns or real firearms for the high school kids). Even younger children are also allowed to attend the programs because they have older siblings in the program and they would otherwise have to walk home alone.
U.N. TO PROBE U.S. HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
PROPAGANDA FOR WAR
ISSUE TO BE REVIEWED
Gillian Gilhool, WILPF U.S.
215-923-7789, email: grgilhool@verizon.net
Susi Snyder, WILPF International
office: +41 22 919 7080, mobile: +41 79 813 8369, email: susi.snyder@wilpf.ch
GENEVA, JULY 5, 2006—Today, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) joined a coalition of 142 U.S.-based non-profits and organizations and 32 individuals to release the most comprehensive review of human rights violations in the United States ever compiled. The 465-page “shadow report” was assembled for the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee as part of its review of U.S. human rights abuses later this month.
The U.N. review is a procedure that occurs every four years for countries that have ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR is one of two treaties that together are equivalent to an international “Bill of Rights.” The U.S. signed and ratified the treaty in 1992, but the U.S. review – its second – is more than seven years late due to the State Department’s delay in submitting its own official report.
REPORT ON FAILURE OF COMPLIANCE WITH ARTICLE 20 PROHIBITING PROPAGANDA FOR WAR
REPORT ON FAILURE OF COMPLIANCE WITH ARTICLE 20 PROHIBITING PROPAGANDA FOR WAR
prepared for the
UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHT COMMITTEE
Eighty-seventh session
for its review of the
Second and Third Periodic Report of the United States of America under the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights
June 2006
INTRODUCTION
This report regarding United States violations of Article 20, paragraph one, is submitted to the Committee to inform and support its consideration of the paramount issues the Committee requested the United States to address in its written and oral presentation to the Committee in July, 2006. Article 20 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights implicitly recognizes that the condition of war jeopardizes the integrity and exercise of all of the political and civil rights elsewhere declared in the Covenant.
Shadow Report on Katrina
To: Members of the U.N. Human Rights Committee
From: Rev. Daniel Buford for the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Peoples Institute, and Allen Temple
Date: May 31, 2006
Re: Update on Issue 16 cited in CCPR/C/USA/Q/3 related to Articles 2 and 26 (and issues 14, 18, and 19 related to articles 7, 6, 2, and 26) concerning facts about Katrina (and Rita) disaster victims not covered in the 2d/3d U.S. Report or the presentation by Rev. Buford at the 2006 March Committee meeting.
