U.S. NON-PROFITS SUBMIT 465-PAGE “SHADOW REPORT” DETAILING ABUSES AT HOME

PROPAGANDA FOR WAR
ISSUE TO BE REVIEWED

Contacts:
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 

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.

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.