SCHOOLS FOR MISRULE pp. 219-220
“THE U.S. IN THE DOCK (CONT’D)
Another enforcement mechanism for international human rights likely to assume greater visibility in coming years is the U.N.-supervised process known as universal periodic review.
The United Nations system includes standing committees whose mission is to oversee the implementation of various human rights treaties; among them are CERD (the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) and CEDAW (the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women). While the rulings of these bodies are ordinarily not viewed as binding, at least for the present, their findings may influence other tribunals that do have binding authority. Some of the oversight committees are empowered to hear complaints against countries over alleged human rights violations, whether individualized (by, say, a particular inmate complaining of treatment) or generalized (as with a challenge to an overall prison practice).
In 2oo6, responding in part to complaints from countries who felt they were being unfairly singled out for human rights scrutiny, and in even greater part to pressure from NGOs and their associates, the U.N. adopted what is known as “universal periodic review,” in which all its member states (192 at last count) submit to review of their human rights records on a rotating schedule every four years. These reviews function in effect as audits: the country files its periodic self-critical review, groups critical of the country’s record submit their own critiques of its record, and the U.N. panel then responds by asking for further information, congratulating the state for its action on a certain point, declaring its dissatisfaction on another, and so forth.
How this process works can be seen in a recent scheduled review by the U.N.’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) of the U.S. government’s latest periodic report on its human rights progress. In a series of terse, peremptory pronouncements, the panel expressed its favorable or unfavorable opinions at the actions of the U.S. Congress in enacting or failing to enact certain new statutes. It announced its decided disapproval of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that did not go as far as some had hoped in allowing race-conscious assignment of students in schools, and its even more decided disapproval of ballot initiatives by which the electorates of California and Michigan had by wide margins voted to end race-based preferences at public universities. In fact it suggested that the voters of California and Michigan by passing the initiatives might have placed their states in violation of international law. And it went on to deliver itself of opinions—in all cases, opinions associated broadly with the Left—on a dozen other hot topics in American governance. No one involved with this process—not the committee members, hailing from various countries; not the U.S. government itself, variously adopting apologetic and proud-of-our-progress tones in defending its record; and of course not the NGOs demanding stronger condemnation of the U.S. for its ways—seemed to think this process was in anyway unusual, presumptuous, or outrageous. All accept it as the new normal.”