Filed under: indescribable,international,Not so popular,null,Uncategorized
This document is difficult to read. It is a Chinese government doc trying with awkward sincerity to review human rights in the US by our own standards, most of which the authors clearly find arbitrary.
It’s like a baby wikipedia article: full of random tidbits that happen to have been published somewhere online. With a mix of real issues and rumors, minimal context, axe-grinding, and undue weight to whatever attracted media attention. It lacks the measure and professionalism of the US report it is responding to (though it gets partial credit for making a handwave at its sources, which our reports should do much more of).
But it does point out one oversight in our list of country reports: we do not publish an internal report on developments within the US in the same format — though the relevant data is gathered by other parts of government. This made me wonder: what sorts of reports do we put out? Could we remedy that? I was also reminded that plans to set up an umbrella national human rights institution have come and gone… were any still under active consideration?
So I checked: the closest thing we have to such a report is the quadrennial self-assessment of human rights that we compile (as every UN member should) as part of the UNHRC’s “universal periodic review” process. What I found was enlightening and surprising, though not always encouraging. It is worth its own review; stay tuned for a future recap.