Washington’s no-show

The Trump administration’s failure to appear at hearings at the  Inter-American Commission on Human Rights          on March 21 telegraphs its disregard for international institutions generally and human rights in particular.

Trump officials notified the Commission, which is the independent         human rights  organ of the Organization of American States, a day before the scheduled hearings that it would not attend. State Department official contended that it would be inappropriate to participate since several of the hearings addressed issues under judicial review: the administration’s executive actions on  immigration    and its greenlighting of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which are winding their ways through the courts.

But that explanation failed to assuage critics, who argued that Washington’s absence erodes its legitimacy,          emboldens authoritarian leaders in the hemisphere to shrug off their own accountability and dodge dialogue and presages broader disengagement with international human rights institutions.

The move represented an abrupt departure from past practice. The      United States  has a long, bipartisan history of engaging with the Commission, even when the topic is being litigated. Further undermining the administration’s stated excuse, among the hearings scheduled were the country’s failure to respect the rights of       asylum seekers        - grievances that predate the Trump administration but endure under his watch - and     a case about Peruvian-Japanese detention during World War II that is not the subject of pending litigation.

A        State Department official     sought to offer reassuring words, claiming that the refusal to participate “does not have any bearing on current or future US engagement with the Commission”.        But     if ongoing litigation were really the driving force behind Washington’s absence, officials could have signalled their respect for the process and the participating parties by attending the meeting and rebuffing questions they deemed inadvisable to answer.

Human rights groups were outraged.         Jamil Dakwar, director of the         American Civil Liberties Union human rights programme,   noted: “This is another worrying sign that the Trump Administration is not only launching an assault on human rights at home, but is also trying to undermine international bodies charged with holding abusive governments accountable.”

And according to       Clara Long,    US Programme researcher at         Human Rights Watch:          “In pulling out of this hearing, the United States is offering a negative example for the rest of the countries in the Americas, who show up and engage in the Inter-American system.” The refusal to participate          puts the US in the company of other countries        whose human rights records it disdains.

Some  observers have suggested   that the administration’s decision may be more reflective of lax attention to protocols and its staffing of the State Department than outright hostility to the Commission and its mission. But whether the result of intentional snub, dysfunction or different priorities, the move damages US leadership.

“This reduces a lot of the Trump administration’s credibility and legitimacy on human rights issues,” Jose Miguel Vivanco, head of the Americas division of  Human Rights Watch, told the         Miami Herald.

The administration’s absence didn’t thwart the proceedings, during which groups offered testimony amid the spectacle of empty chairs administration officials were expected to fill, while    Commission officials expressed dismay at Washington’s intransigence.       Commission Vice President Margarette May Macaulay      called  the administration’s refusal to show up “a pity”, while Commissioner Paulo Vannuchi lamented the refusal to attend, “which is what would have made it possible for there to be a democratic exchange of opposing views being aired”.

This article has been excerpted from: ‘Why Washington was a no show at human rights hearings’.

Courtesy: Aljazeera.com