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POLITICS: U.S. Faulted for Short-Circuiting Global Treaties

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 19 2004 (IPS) - The United States, which preaches the virtues of good governance and rule of law to the outside world, is notoriously remiss in either signing, ratifying or adhering to major international treaties, according to U.S. academics, constitutional lawyers and human rights activists.

”The problem,” says Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights,” is not just the U.S. refusal to sign and ratify treaties that are important to insure global standards, but even when the United States ratifies such treaties, it apparently does not feel bound by them.”

Such treaties and U.N. conventions lay down international norms governing political, social and economic life, from human rights and disarmament to torture and the environment.

Most recently, the U.S. military has violated treaties with guidelines on how to treat prisoners or civilians during military conflicts or detention.

”The open and notorious ignoring of obligations of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture – treaties ratified by the United States – in its treatment of those captured in the Afghan and Iraq wars is a demonstration of U.S. exceptionalism that is dangerous for the world and for its own nationals,” Ratner told IPS.

In a memo to U.S. President George W Bush last January, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales dismissed the Geneva Conventions as antiquated. ”As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war,” he wrote.

”In my judgement, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

Besides its own narrow interpretations of treaties it has ratified (which creates legally binding obligations under international law) Washington has also refused to ratify dozens of conventions and treaties that it has already signed.

These key ”un-ratified” treaties include the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Kyoto Protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention against Transnational Organised Crime and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

A U.N. official says that many governments find it difficult to obtain the necessary domestic approval required to ratify a treaty that they have signed.

”This may be due to domestic political factors. Exceptionally, it is also possible that a country would sign a treaty in order to benefit from the positive international reaction that might be generated without really having the intention to ratify it and incur internationally binding obligations,” Palitha Kohona, head of the U.N. Treaty Section, told IPS.

Washington, for example, took 40 years to ratify the Genocide Convention, which it signed in 1948.

In an unprecedented reversal of its own policy, the United States also declared in May 2002 that it no longer considered itself bound by the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court (ICC), on the grounds that the body might try U.S. citizens on ”frivolous charges”.

The United States withdrew from the treaty despite having signed it in December 2000.

Besides refusing to ratify several treaties it has signed, Washington has also refused to sign several other global treaties, dismissing them out of hand.

These key unsigned treaties include the Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Landmines, the International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons, and the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

In contrast, the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – Britain, France, China and Russia – have a better track record than the United States.

Those four nations have ratified some of the key treaties rejected by Washington, including the Convention on the Law of the Sea, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Child Rights Convention and CEDAW.

Washington has signed and then quickly ratified only two recent treaties, both relating to terrorism: the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.. It signed the first in January 1998, ratifying it in June 2002, and signed the second in January 2000 and also ratified in June 2002.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, is critical of what he calls U.S. hypocrisy and double standards.

”It is ironic,” he told IPS, ”that the United States, which has long prided itself for its commitment to the rule of law and was the primary architect of many of these treaties, now seeks to take advantage of its sole superpower status to flaunt these very agreements, as well as shield allies like Israel and Morocco from similar international legal obligations.”

”Such perceived arrogance, hypocrisy and double standards makes even reasonable concerns raised by U.S. officials about the conduct of other governments easy to dismiss,” he added.

”The support previous U.S. administrations gave to such international commitments did not come out of liberal idealism as much as it did by a realisation that such treaties, in the long run, are in the national security interests of the United States,” Zunes said.

Undermining these treaties and related principles of international law, only encourages activities by governments and movements that threaten international order, he added.

”For a long time, the United States has employed a policy of de facto exceptionalism, simply ignoring international treaties and international law when it is convenient for purposes of its international policy or that of its favoured allies,” said Mark Lance, associate professor of philosophy, justice and peace at Georgetown University.

”We saw this very clearly in Vietnam, in the many crimes committed by and supported by the U.S. administration (of former President Ronald Reagan, 1981-89) in Latin America, in U.S. support for Israeli crimes and in support of Indonesian genocide in East Timor, and many other examples,” he added.

What is new, Lance added, is Washington’s willingness to be explicit about this. ”The Bush administration says openly that international law, and international institutions, do not apply to the United States, or apply in different ways than they do to other countries.”

”All these actions,” he pointed out, ”undercut both public confidence in international law and the ability of international legal institutions to function effectively. As a result, they make the world a far more dangerous place for us all.”