This will be a brief diary entry (still at work), but Susan’s current FP-story prompted me.
It is all based on one article that came my way on the US-UN Foundation’s daily press sampling.
The premise of the article is the US reluctance, or even outright hostility to international treaties.
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 8 (IPS) – In 1989, the United Nations put forth the Convention on the Rights of the Child — a treaty that protects the civil and economic rights of children around the world.
To date, 192 nations have ratified the treaty. Only two have not.
A decade later, just seven countries voted against the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), an independent body created to prosecute genocide and crimes against humanity.
And in October of this year, members of the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) voted overwhelmingly to pass a new treaty aimed at protecting cultural diversity worldwide. Only two states voted against it.
The United States is the only nation to oppose all three. And the list of U.N. treaties and conventions that Washington has not signed or has actively opposed goes on and on.
While the vast majority of the world’s governments support these treaties, as well as other U.N. diplomatic efforts and conventions, the U.S. government can almost be expected to stand in opposition each time such treaty proceedings arise.
Indeed, the United States, especially in recent years, is increasingly being seen in the world as a lone state, thumbing its diplomatic nose at international pacts on everything from banning the use and production of landmines to curbing global warming.
This staunch refusal to join with other nations on such a wide range of treaties, experts say, is hurting the already tarnished image of the world’s sole superpower in the eyes of the international community.
“It sends the message that the United States has been the biggest violator and thrasher of international law in the post-war period,” Richard Du Boff, a professor emeritus of economic history at Bryn Mawr College in the state of Pennsylvania, told IPS.
Du Boff added that while the U.S. has often opposed U.N. conventions since the end of the Second World War, its isolationist posture “has escalated dramatically and reached a level never before challenged” during the presidency of George W. Bush.
This, Du Boff said, makes the U.S. a “rogue” in the realm of international law.
Please read it. It’s not too long.
I have previously made an entry related to the the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Does the US’ continued refusal to participate in important conventions make it a rogue state?
