US Election and Human Rights
The 2016 US presidential election has generated a great deal of debate on human rights issues—from torture to paid family leave, immigration to policing—on which Human Rights Watch has been working for years. In the lead-up to the vote, our experts will examine some of the key issues being debated, as well as others that should be top priorities for the next president.
US: Paid Family Leave Matters – For All Workers
The United States is a true outlier globally when it comes to paid family leave – of 185 countries covered in a 2014 International Labour Organization report, only two lacked paid maternity leave under law – the US and Papua New Guinea. At least 70 countries guarantee paid paternity leave. Many countries have other forms of family leave.
But if promises made during the 2016 presidential election can be relied on, that may change under the next administration. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton support some degree of paid family leave. (Currently, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act offers only unpaid leave, and four US states have paid family leave.)
Trump’s proposal – six weeks of paid maternity leave for new mothers after they have given birth, funded through unemployment insurance – falls short of modern workforce needs. It excludes fathers, and appears to leave out mothers who adopt. While his plan includes tax deductions for broader family caregiving, it would not guarantee paid family leave for other workers, like those caring for elderly parents or loved ones with disabilities.
Clinton’s proposal largely matches a bill pending in Congress, the Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act. If adopted, the FAMILY Act would enable workers to take leave to care for new children or seriously ill family members, or to deal with their own serious health conditions, while receiving partial pay (66 percent of wages, to a cap) for up to 12 weeks.
Under the FAMILY Act, paid leave would be funded by small payroll contributions, administered through a social security mechanism. While the Clinton campaign said she applauds the FAMILY Act bill, her plan would rely on “tax reforms that will ensure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share,” rather than payroll contributions.
Experience from other countries shows that there is no single “right” way to fund paid family leave. The trend is to rely on social insurance mechanisms that take the burden off individual employers. Both Clinton and Trump should better explain their funding ideas, and the next administration should make paid family leave a long overdue reality.
Tainted Water Issue Much Deeper Than Flint
The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, is on the radar of both presidential candidates, but it’s not clear that either understands the scale of the issue nationally or has a plan to address it.
“It used to be cars were made in Flint, and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico,” Donald Trump told an audience in Flint, Michigan two weeks ago. “Now, the cars are made in Mexico and you can’t drink the water in Flint.”
“When the children of majority-black Flint, Michigan, have been drinking and bathing in lead-poisoned water for more than a year, making sure all Americans have clean air and water isn’t just a health issue,” Hillary Clinton said in February. “It’s a civil rights issue.”
But the crisis in Flint, in which thousands of children were exposed to toxic lead while officials denied there was a problem, is the tip of the iceberg and a cautionary tale for the next president. The tainted water in Flint – and the government’s failure to provide timely information to the public – is a human rights disaster that requires resolute action by Congress – not the partisan bickering delaying it.
But, the next United States president will have to face the aging water and wastewater systems that plague municipalities around the country. In 2013, the US Conference of Mayors raised the alarm about the high cost of necessary investments in aging water infrastructure and services and that financing these investments would disproportionately affect elderly, poor, and middle class households through rate hikes and taxes. The conference of mayors called for “a fresh look at local affordability and national water policy.”
The US hasn’t recognized a human right to water. But it’s clear that people’s rights are at stake. The candidates need to offer nationwide approaches to ensuring safe drinking water that don’t burden poor families or put the health of the most vulnerable people – a community’s children – at risk.
Holding Police Accountable for Excessive Force
In a year already marked by a slew of controversial police shootings, Monday’s presidential debate comes in the wake of yet two more tragic, deadly incidents.
Terence Crutcher was shot by police in Tulsa, Oklahoma on September 16. In video of the incident, Crutcher appears unarmed, with his arms raised above his head when he was shot. The officer who shot him has been charged with manslaughter.
Keith Lamont Scott was shot by police in Charlotte, North Carolina four days later. Police allege he was armed; his family disputes that charge. People in Charlotte have been protesting the shooting since Tuesday.
Donald Trump stated that he was “very troubled” by the shooting of Crutcher. Hillary Clinton tweeted that the shooting of Crutcher was “intolerable.”
The candidates would do well to explain on Monday what, realistically, they each plan to do on the broader issues surrounding these incidents. Whoever is elected in November will need to tackle the issue of the excessive use of force – sometimes deadly – by police in the US. Police officers have rarely been held accountable for these abuses, and the victims are often black men.
Solutions to these problems lie, for the most part, at the state and local level. But there are important steps the new president can take. One is to increase efforts to deal with racial bias among police. “They’ll stop them just for being black,” a Ferguson, Missouri woman told Human Rights Watch at the height of the 2014 protests there – a complaint heard in communities across the country. Proposals to address racial profiling by police have repeatedly failed in Congress.
Transparency is a big issue. We still don’t know how many people are killed by police every year, or what proportion of them are black, because the US government hasn’t found a way to correctly track this data. A new president can put more resources into data collection, and create more incentives for law enforcement agencies to track and share it.
Finally, holding law enforcement accountable for improper use of force is a persistent challenge – Human Rights Watch documented these difficulties in 14 US cities back in 1998. Almost 20 years later, the same obstacles remain. While state and local governments are responsible for accountability, Congress could help strengthen the Justice Department’s ability to investigate police misconduct and to hold those responsible for abuse accountable.
Winning the War on Drugs by Ending It
Despite much discussion about crime during the US presidential election campaign, neither major party candidate has fully spelled out their views on a defining feature of US criminal justice policy: the so-called “war on drugs.”
For decades, the US has poured billions of dollars a year into combatting drugs, through heavy-handed enforcement within the country and abroad of criminal laws on drug possession, production, and distribution. But in recent years, countries like Mexico and Colombia have questioned the effectiveness of this approach. Several US states have legalized marijuana, and the administration of President Barack Obama has increasingly stressed treatment for problematic drug use rather than punishment.
Donald Trump recently said: “we will appoint the best… federal law enforcement officers in the country to dismantle the international cartels… and I will stop the drugs from flowing into our country and poisoning our youth….” In the past, he has spoken of the need for treatment for drug dependence.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign has talked about various criminal justice reforms, including prioritizing treatment over incarceration for low-level, non-violent drug offenders, and “focusing federal enforcement resources on violent crime, not simple marijuana possession.”
Clinton has signaled openness to allowing states to experiment with legalization of marijuana, while Trump has not taken a definitive position.
The reality is that, 45 years since US President Richard Nixon declared the “war on drugs,” little has changed in the rates of global drug production or overall drug use in the US. Rather than helping people with problematic drug use, tough enforcement has often led to human rights abuses – extrajudicial executions in the Philippines, the death penalty for drug offenses in Indonesia, killings and torture in Mexico. In the US, existing policies have contributed to mass arrests, disproportionately of Black people, with devastating consequences for the lives and communities of those arrested. Meanwhile, the criminalization of drugs has generated enormous revenues for organized criminal groups that commit atrocities, corrupt authorities, and undermine democratic institutions in countries from Colombia to Afghanistan.
Many people in the US and across the world are starting to come to terms with this reality and to call for a fresh approach, moving away from the current heavy emphasis on criminalization. The candidates should listen, and the next president should chart a course away from the failed policies of the war on drugs.
Drones After Obama
The use of drones outside conventional war zones has received scant attention in the US presidential campaign, despite being a signature element of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. While former president George W. Bush began the US use of armed drones, Obama rapidly expanded deployment of these remotely piloted aircraft to carry out thousands of so-called “targeted killings” against alleged terrorist suspects abroad. Yet, Obama has provided almost no information on who the US has killed, including how many civilians have been among the dead.
Where do the candidates stand? Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton have had much to say directly on the issue, suggesting that neither intends a major shift from the Obama administration’s policies.
In his key foreign policy speech of August 15, Trump said “drone strikes will remain part of our strategy, but we will also seek to capture high-value targets to gain needed information to dismantle their organizations.” That comment is consistent with Obama’s policy.
As secretary of state, Clinton supported Obama’s expanded use of armed drones, calling them “one of the most effective and controversial elements” of the administration’s counterterrorism strategy in her 2014 autobiography.
On July 1 the Obama administration, bowing to increased public pressure, released what it described as all casualty figures for US airstrikes outside conventional war zones since 2009. Rather than shedding light on how many civilians were killed in attacks, however, the data raised more questions than it answered. The administration reported that in 473 strikes from 2009 through 2015 outside areas of active hostilities – defined as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria – the United States killed up to 116 “non-combatants” and up to 2,581 “combatants.” But the data did not provide tolls by attack, country, date, or even year, making it impossible to learn details about any particular strike.
The data also does not reveal how many civilians – if any – were killed in attacks that violated international humanitarian or human rights law. The US should make such information public, along with the findings of investigations into strikes that may have been unlawful and whether US security force personnel found responsible were disciplined or prosecuted, as international law requires.
Whatever the outcome of the election, drones will likely continue to be a central element of US counterterrorism policy. The next president should, at minimum, make the program not only more transparent, but accountable. That means public acknowledgment of strikes and credible investigations into allegations of civilian harm. Victims of unlawful strikes should receive compensation, and Obama administration plans to offer condolence payments to all civilian victims should be adopted.
Death Penalty on the Ballot
The death penalty hasn’t been an issue in this presidential election, in part because the two main candidates support the continued use of capital punishment.
Hillary Clinton backs the death penalty for certain terrorism-related crimes and supports the Justice Department decision to seek the death penalty for Dylann Roof, who is accused of the June 2015 mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Donald Trump has stated that he would support the death penalty for any person who kills a police officer.
But while the candidates support capital punishment, the death penalty is very much in play in two key states: California and Nebraska.
California voters are asked to vote on two ballot measures on the death penalty: Proposition 62, which would abolish capital punishment in the state, and Proposition 66, which aims to streamline the appeals process for capital cases, in effect speeding up executions. A 2012 attempt to abolish the death penalty via ballot initiative failed, with 52 percent voting to retain the penalty.
Nebraska voters will vote to retain or reject their legislature’s decision to abolish the death penalty. If they reject the legislature’s decision, Nebraska will be the first US state in 21 years to reinstate the death penalty after abolishing it.
The number of people being executed in the US is falling – 15 so far this year, most of them in Texas and Georgia. That’s the lowest number since 1991. Thirty states still allow for the death penalty, though in 2016 only five have carried out executions.
Human Rights Watch opposes capital punishment in all cases because the inherent dignity of the person cannot be squared with the death penalty, a form of punishment unique in its cruelty and finality. It is a penalty widely rejected by countries around the world. In fact, the vast majority of all executions each year are carried out by just five countries: Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and the United States.
While abolishing the death penalty has not been up for discussion during the US presidential election, the state-by-state promise of progress on abolition – as well as the threat of retreat – will still be very much in play in November.
A Flawed Immigration System
What to do About The 11 Million?
That’s the politically charged question about the estimated 11 million immigrants without legal status living in the United States. It’s a question for debate during the current US election, as it was in 2012, as it was in 2008, and so on. But year after year, presidents and Congress fail to address the flaws in the country’s immigration system.
More than half of those 11 million have lived in the US for more than a decade, and over 2 million have lived in the US for 20 years or more. They have families and friendships in the US and US neighbors. They worship and work in the US. Their roots are deep, and their rights matter.
The issue has been one of the flashpoints of the election. Donald Trump has consistently called for the large-scale removal of undocumented immigrants from the country. “Under my plan the undocumented, or, as you would say, illegal immigrant wouldn’t be in the country,” he said recently. Hillary Clinton has pledged to pursue “comprehensive reform” of immigration laws and a pathway to citizenship.
But what's needed is not just “reform”, but a radical overhaul of draconian immigration laws and enforcement practices that have taken a steep human toll during the eight years of the Obama administration.
More than 5 million children born in the US – who are therefore citizens – are in families with at least one unauthorized parent.
When these children turn 21, they can apply for family members to get legal status. But until then, these children are being raised with the constant threat that one or both of their parents will be apprehended and deported. That risk and its impact on family life and decision-making can affect preschool enrollment rates, English proficiency, and even brain development. The rights of these US citizen children are at stake as well.
All Americans have a stake in this debate. They have neighbors and colleagues who are among the 11 million. They benefit when their neighbors aren’t afraid to call the police when they witness a crime, or report a workplace violation when people are in danger.
Important questions about the US immigration system are in play during the 2016 election. Yet people with deep roots in the country – and their children – should not be held hostage while those questions are resolved. Immigrants who have lived in the US for many years should have a shot at legal status.
Life goes on, roots grow deeper, and no one is served by leaving 11 million people in limbo.
Source: Human Rights Watch
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