By Leslie Griffith, t r u t h o u t

On Friday, at a United Nations meeting in Geneva, the United States broke a series of legal promises. Keeping those promises would have proved extremely embarrassing to the United States government by pointing out that human rights abuses are being committed here at home and at US military installations abroad.

In 1994, the United States Senate ratified the International Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Against Women, promising to provide reports every two years on racial discrimination in the United States. The reports were to include anywhere in the world where the US military is in charge. In other words, the United States military, no matter where it was on the globe, agreed to report discrimination. That now includes Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

The treaty is the “supreme law of the land” under the US Constitution, article 6, clause 2. Every nation that signed the treaty (one hundred seventy-seven) was charged with giving a national report on such basic areas of discrimination as health care, education and prison terms. According to the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute and the National Lawyer’s Guild, the United States on Friday presented a “Shadow” report to the United Nations Committee, never mentioning Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or the behavior of US corporations working under US military contracts.

Instead, US officials presented facts on the federal level explaining (for instance) how much money was given to education, how much money was supplied to prisons, etc. Only four states: Oregon, Illinois, New Mexico and South Carolina, were mentioned, and officials in those states who were contacted by local activists say they never received any phone calls of inquiry by government officials.

(Original Article)