United Nations to investigate humans rights abuses in United States
What is the first thing you think of when you hear a nation or an individual has committed human rights abuses? If you are like me, you think
about war crimes or genocide. Countries such as Burma and Iran come to mind. Imagine my surprise to learn that the United States is being investigated by the United Nations for suspected human rights violations. What is our crime, you may ask? They may have already made up their minds that we are not providing enough affordable housing in urban areas. It’s no secret that our country has been going through the worst financial crisis it has faced in many years. At the heart of this crisis is the housing market, which has imploded in on itself. Many people have lost their homes because of this crisis and admittedly, that is not a good thing. I fail to understand however, why the United Nations believes there is a basis for an investigation. Raquel Rolnik, an independent human rights expert for the United Nations, had this to say about the mortgage crisis last week.
The mortgage crisis that is at the heart of the current financial turmoil reflects “fundamental” flaws in the way countries approach housing, and highlights the danger in thinking that markets alone will ensure adequate housing for all.
Raquel Rolnik is the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing and she reports directly to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. You would think she would have enough on her hands with countries like Iran, Burma, and Darfur, but evidently our own government has different ideas. They were the ones who invited her to visit and check us out. Here is the press release from the UN.
GENEVA — The Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Ms. Raquel Rolnik, will visit the United States of America from 22 October to 8 November 2009 at the invitation of the Government. “I will collect first-hand information on the status of realization of the right to adequate housing in the US, with particular emphasis on social housing, the foreclosure crisis and homelessness,” said Ms Rolnik. “The United States has been implementing a variety of programs and policies towards providing adequate housing for everyone. I want to look at their functioning and impact from a human rights perspective.” The Special Rapporteur will hold meetings with senior Government officials including at the Department of State and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She will also meet NGO representatives. Ms Rolnik will visit Washington DC, New York, Wilkes-Barre, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The Special Rapporteur will hold a press conference on Sunday 8 November 2009 at 11:00 a.m. at a centre for homeless people in Washington DC (the Center for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV), 425 2nd St NW). A report on the visit will be submitted to the Human Rights Council in 2010.
I don’t mind telling you, I have a problem with this visit. Where in our Constitution does it give an international body the right to come into the United States and question the way our country operates? From everything I have been able to read about the visit, it appears she has already made up her mind that we are guilty of humans rights violations because there is not enough affordable housing, at least according to her. With her reporting to the Humans Rights Council next year, what will come after that? Will the council recommend sanctions against us until we provide more housing for those who can not afford it? More and more, I am beginning to question why we are involved in the United Nations at all. Why do we give them so much of our money and allow them to criticize us on every hand? I wonder why we try so much to help other countries by sending millions of our dollars to their governments, trying to prop them up, hoping they will be our friend and support our efforts around the globe. Maybe it is time for us to completely withdraw from the UN and let them put their headquarters in a country that has more freedoms than the United States. Oh wait, I forgot. There is no country that has more freedoms than the good old USA. Do you suppose Raquel Rolnik will remember that when she makes her report? Probably not.
“Where in our Constitution does it give an international body the right to come into the United States and question the way our country operates?”
-Larry, our Constitution doesn’t give a U.N. official the right to “question the way our country operates”.
“GENEVA — The Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Ms. Raquel Rolnik, will visit the United States of America from 22 October to 8 November 2009 at the invitation of the Government.”
“….at the invitation of the Government.”?
Why should we appear to be so thin skinned to the world. As great a nation as we are, there is always room for improvement. We have to listen to others if we expect others to listen to us, don’t y’think?
Nothing and I mean nothing is more ridiculous than having the United Nations investigate human rights abuses. This is literally like the fox guarding the henhouse. The third world countries that control the General Assembly have an appaulding record on this and to point their finger at the United States is just an attempt to take the spot light off them—actually the spotlight is never on the real abusers that would not be popular with the post-colonial states in Africa and Asia.
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David,
I don’t think questioning why the United Nations seems to think there is cause to investigate the United States for human rights abuses is being thin skinned. Sure, there is always room for improvement, but this smacks of an effort to demean our country. You will have to forgive me if I get my hackles up over that.
“I don’t think questioning why the United Nations seems to think there is cause to investigate the United States for human rights abuses is being thin skinned”
We Americans have this “exceptionalist attitude”. I use to think so too. “We’re No.1, we’re more free than other nations” we like to believe. We’re richer, smarter, better than anyone else! And yes, our hackles get up when any other nation has a critique for us.
Larry, it’s not demeaning to point out our deficiencies, and if one thinks that way, number 1: there may be some truth to the critique, and 2nd, that would be thinned skinned. But i’ll forgive you Larry, because we were taught all our lives that U.S.A is #1!
If an individual has the idea that no one can point out their errors, others would find that individual insufferable. Same goes for nations. Chairman Mao pointed out “Correct mistakes if you have committed them and guard against them if you have not”. If one (….or a nation) is blind to their faults, it is easy to see the problems that individual or nation may have. America seems to be blinded by our perception of greatness. -Not that we aren’t great, but just not great enough to believe no one else has a valid criticism. Lets not be that insufferable fool that we seem to becoming.
David,
No need for you to forgive me because I still think the United States is #1. We are the best country in the world, there is no way anyone can convince me otherwise. Yes, we do have our faults, but not to the extent that we should be investigated for human rights abuses over housing issues. This goes well beyond having “valid criticisms”. In my opinion, this is just another attempt to make us look bad.
http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
Sobering analysis Larry.
“The transformation is being fueled by a globalized economy, marked by an historic shift of relative wealth and economic power from West to East. and by the increasing weight of new players- especially China and India. THE U.S. WILL REMAIN THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ACTOR BUT WILL BE LESS DOMINANT.
(-The capitalization is my own for emphasis)
Number 1 really has little real meaning, when the majority of Americans will loose more and more real wages and job opportunities.
We make NOTHING any more. It is mostly “outsourced” these days. This has been going on since 1980….
David, I think your argument would be quite a bit stronger if you would quote, say, Abraham Lincoln instead of Chairman Mao. There are probably quite a few people who would agree with some of your main points but just cringe at your source of inspiration. And without wishing to sound nasty I find your willingness to “forgive” Larry the absolute height of arrogance.
Actually Mike, i hold absolutely no ill will toward Larry. I meant it.
As for Mao, i purposely used him instead of others to illustrate my point a bit. Many years ago i had the “Little Red Book”. I hated “The Chi-coms” as they were popularly know in the 60′s(and Rush still likes to use it), and read the book to debunk those pesky reds. But…..
“Correct mistakes if you have committed them and guard against them if you have not”
struck me as containing a grain of truth. As much as i hated the Chi-coms, i had to have some regard for the supposed author of such a quote.
And mistakes they(China) made. However, look at China today. Perhaps that self-criticism had a bit to do with it…..but i haven’t interviewed any Chinese leaders on that. Just a hunch. But what they did was unexpected by all: They adapted a form of the “evil capitalism”, and succeeded. Whatever we may think of them, they are successful beyond ANY ONES expectations.
The lesson? Perhaps we could do that which is counter-intuitive, namely listen to external critique, and build off of that.
Territorial Exclusion
and Violence:
The Case of
São Paulo, Brazil
N U M B E R 26
WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL
CENTER FOR SCHOLARS
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1999
Raquel Rolnik
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:45NyQ42zkHQJ:www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/ACF1BA.pdf+Raquel+Rolnik&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
In this paper, she does a bit of “self-criticism”
I don’t know what Raquel Rolnik’s agenda is. Perhaps she is full of it. But don’t make the mistake of destroying the message by destroying the messenger. There may be a grain of wisdom in her studies.
-Larry……
We may well be No. 1 still, but we are but a mere shadow of what we once were. It used to be a person could get a job that allowed a person to live a good life. But the world in which my son has inherited is certainly not the country we grew up in. Perhaps Ms. Rolnik has an anti-American agenda. From the looks of her paper on Brazil(her own country), she certainly has some criticism of her own.
Did I read that right? Did that say the UN was invited in to investigate the US? Obama has invited the UN into this country to investigate us for human rights violations, he is undermining US sovereignty. There is no constitutional basis for such a visit and I don’ think that we have ever had a president that would have agreed to this in the past. Obama has been running around the world talking about our arrogance and apologizing to the world for our past sins, it looks like this is the next logical step in Obama’s attempt to show that we are a better nation now. Pathetic!
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Housing is not a human right, like life or liberty. It is what every man and woman are given the freedom to pursue; it is what people are capable of EARNING in a free country like the U.S. Children need taking care of. Adults need to have jobs. Our president and his far left cronies like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid vilify corporations, especially those who are less than enthusiastic about the left’s agenda and candidates for office. THAT is what has depleted the rights of once-free, once-prosperous Americans.
The “freedom to pursue” would of more value if there were a means to pursue it. In today’s America with little or no industrial production, and the relatively low wages from the service industry instead of the higher industrial wages that have been outsourced, it is difficult at best to pursue this freedom(…….finding affordable housing). Just glad i’m retired and have clear title to my double-wide on 2 1/2 acres.
Remember, since the 1980′s, we have pursue the “Right’s Agenda” of lower taxes, deregulation, and the like. It was supposed to “trickle down” (-remember that?)
It didn’t work as Reagan predicted. Instead of better wages, industry saw the profit potential in “outsourcing”, so good bye well paying production jobs.
You didn’t address Whit’s first sentence. Housing is not a right. the comrades at the U.N. seems to think it is.
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Wow. Hadn’t taken a look at this one-Chairman Mao, Abraham Lincoln, the United Nations and the US Constitution in one discussion, though? Now THAT’S an American discussioon!
Larry, I might agree with others that our Constitution does not and should not protect our country from international scrutiny. We are a great country, but there is room for improvement. Does this rise to the occassion of human rights violations? I am skeptical. Is this a rising American emergency? In some parts of the country, absolutely, and we need to come up with some good solutions.
What we really need to be looking at is the unprecedented number of foreclosures in the country and how that is affecting the ability of otherwise credit-worthy families to obtain housing. Many of these people have adequate incomes, yet they are being turned away by rental agencies and even private renters because of bad credit due to foreclosures. Locally, our shelters are overflowing with people like this and our housing agencies are trying to work with property owners, rental associations and even school districts to try to come up with some “new norms”. But it’s a slow process, and meanwhile, families are “floating” in record numbers. It’s affecting their children negatively in many cases, as the few shelters (and in many cases the homes of friends and families who take them in) are often outside the child’s school district, making it doubly hard for transistioning children.
When I wrote this article, I did not mean to imply that the United States was above criticism. What I find so objectionable is how the United Nations seems to think our housing problem is on the level of human rights abuses. I have a really hard time accepting that from them, of all people.
So who is acceptable to critique our once great nation?
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Anyone who has an opinion, would be my stab… Ultimately, here’s the biggest problem I see with the United Nation’s move:
The housing issue in the US is a very real problem, and it’s expanding. But I fear that “here we go again”, relegating the entire conversation to yet another ideological war of words that ultimately buries the issue. When we “go there”, the path of least resistance for our leaders is to “go there” as well. Everybody’s to blame; nobody’s to blame. Eveybody’s at fault; everybody’s absolved. Round and round we’ll go, until all perspectives are stretched into just two- at the opposite end of extreme-and we’re no longer talking about the issue and possible solutions but only shouting slogans at each other. It’s what we have done, over and over again, with immigration reform, health care reform, Social Security reform et al. We-and the politicians who we shold be watching- seem to boil everything down into a game of bashing, until each argument has stretched to it’s most extreme. We’re leaving a lot of issues on the table because of this.
Simple question: Is there even a consensus that the mortgage crisis has caused a housing crisis?
Laurie,
I feel sure there is a housing problem in parts of the United States. There have been too many foreclosures to deny that. Where those people are finding housing, I do not know. Most likely, they are renting.
Honestly, I do not mean to say there is no housing crisis, but I have a major problem with the United Nations and I do not like them coming into our country and acting as if we are committing human rights violations. For them to do so is completely ludicrous and their investigation has no merit.
Here’s the problem locally, mirrored on the national scene from articles I’ve read:
Rental agencies and even many private renters have standard credit evalutations. A foreclosure sends a person into the stratosphere of high risk tenants, causing either outright denials of the rental contract sought OR causing the agency/landlord to ask for huge deposits over an above the first/last month/security. And some of these people’s other credit accounts have suffered while they tried desperately to hang on to mortgages with escalating rates and payments. Many people cannot denied rental contracts or simply cannot afford the huge deposits because of these factors. Thus, a foreclosed family with even two earners (assuming middle class) who have no real savings (like most Americans, I’m afraid) are stuck in a vicious cycle.
I guess what I’m saying is-forget the UN. As a country, we have a mess to try to mitigate.
I think the issue is that by the UN stating that the mortgage crisis is a human rights violation, it implies that certain governing bodies within the US are purposely targeting a certain group of people. While I feel awful for those who lost their homes because they lost their jobs and couldn’t pay their mortgages, or were duped into crazy ARMs where the interest rate skyrocketed way above anything that they could ever pay (whether because they didn’t understand what the paperwork said or they were told something different than what was actually written), it was NOT a conspired effort to target one group or another (folks who just jumped into those loans knowing their $50k income couldn’t pay for a $500k home deserve to lose their homes). People who lost their homes come from all socioeconomic, religious, ethnic, and political backgrounds. There may be some groups that are hit harder than others, but it was not a decisive effort by the government (local or federal).
However, in other areas of the world, where there are very real instances of human rights violations, those people are being specifically persecuted and killed because they belong to a certain group, whether it be a religious group, ethnic group, or political group. Since this is obviously NOT the case here, most of us Americans find this “investigation” incredibly insulting.
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As I said earlier, I did not mean to imply that the United States was above criticism, but equating our housing crisis to human rights violations is a bit over the top, if you ask me.
Wineplz makes a great point..Did the US governement purposfuly harm a group? I don’t think that was their intention, no. Could it have reasonably concluded the inherent harm caused by the actions it took on the country as a whole? Probably, and I think it took these actions with reckless abandon-but it still doesn’t rise to what we think of as a human rights violation.
That said, I still say that the government and mortgage industry bears an enormous responsibility to help right this ship. Yes, there were millions of people who bought homes they couldn’t afford. But they did so only after the US government decided to completely alter standards and norms in the mortgage lending industry. Clinton and his republican Congress weakend th industry with 11th hour laws signed in 1999. The American Dream Act, Zero Down (thus relegating home loans to the status of car loans)-each were programs put forth by the Bush administration and quickly voted into law by Congress. And the GOP majority and congress as a whole entirely snubbed John McCain when he put forth a bill that would have begun to address FHA market weakness and flaws.
YES-individuals should have know that they weren’t protected by these loans. YES-mortgage lenders should have known that jettisoning their standard 20% down wouldn’t protect against downturns inthe market. But the government should have stayed out of the market. Instead, it cam up with a house of cards apporach to lending. President Bush then went out and sold it, stating an Administrative goal of 5 million new homeowners in 4 years, 1.5 million more minority owners. And, worst of all, he used terrorism to sell it, by loundly proclaiming htat the terrorists hate homeowners and freedom and tying it all to patriotism. The government’s deregulatory moves crashed an entire financial sector. What, then, is its responsibility for the fall out of these moves? With or without the UN, we need to deal with this as a country.
I think there is a very simple answer to this situation. We should tell the UN that they are welcome to tour NYC and come back with a report on the deplorable lack of affordable housing. In that case, however, in order to address the needs they outline, we will have to ask them to leave New York so we can take the enormous amount of prime real estate they occupy at no charge, the enormous amount of NYC resources they require each year in police over time, and put that space and money toward renovating the UN complex to accomodate our low income housing needs.
GO YANKEES!!!
See, there Is a solution!
You know, that just might work, Mike. Good suggestion.
Are you a Yankees fan?
Born and raised in the Bronx….BIG Yankees fan. I’ll actually be at the game tonight so you can look for me in the crowd — I’ll be wearing a Yankees hat.
Mike, you can do better than that! Take the Big White Card. Instead of a Bible verse, though, simply write
“Daily Political Realities @ ldjackson.net”
The blog gets national notice, and we’ll finally see who’s behind the posts.
BTW: We’re Angels fans in my house but have a complete bias against the National League. So go, yankees- Lower case is all I can muster today.