American Civil Liberties Union

The United Nations Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises yesterday completed its first country visit to the United States. The Working Group was formed by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2011 to disseminate and implement the recently developed "Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights," which set forth countries' obligation to protect people from human rights violations caused by businesses or other entities and the necessity of appropriate remedies for such violations. The Guiding Principles also outline businesses' responsibility to respect human rights. At the invitation of the U.S. government, the Working Group visited many cities and met with diverse stakeholders including federal and state officials, businesses, trade unions, and civil society organizations.

The ACLU is in Vienna this week, at the 22^nd session of the U.N. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. One resolution the Commission will consider concerns how to move forward with the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMRs) review process. The SMRs, originally adopted in 1955, have been used for decades to advocate for humane treatment of prisoners and detainees, and are, in the words of the U.S. State Department, "the most important set of guidelines" on the treatment of prisoners. International human rights law has developed a great deal since the rules were first drafted, and an updated version of the SMRs is necessary to reflect those changes. To this end, the United Nations General Assembly initiated a review process to amend and update the rules to "reflect recent advances in correctional science and best practices."

The world got a glimpse this week into how the United States treats those we lock in solitary confinement, when the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights heard ACLU testimonies on how our treatment of vulnerable prisoners violates international human rights norms. The short story: we should be ashamed. For a more detailed picture, check back throughout the week for an ongoing blog series on the issue.

The United States has become a global outlier in its over-reliance on incarceration. Our soaring incarceration rates are, by now, a familiar statistic, expressed in any number of shocking formulas: the U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world’s population but over 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated people; the incarceration rate in the U.S. is four times the average for Western European countries; the U.S. incarcerates more people than South America, Central America and the Caribbean combined. In this era of mass incarceration, the racial disparities are staggering: one in four African-American children in the U.S. has grown up with a parent incarcerated.

In recent years, several human rights bodies have faulted the U.S. for failing to live up to its international legal commitments to protect children in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. This week, the U.S. issued its written response to questions raised earlier this year by the United Nations committee charged with implementing the international treaty on the rights of children in armed conflict – and it contains some disturbing news: “Over the last several years the United States has captured more than 200 individuals under the age of 18” and held them in military custody, the U.S. report said.