15 November 2012. PenzaNews. Newly re-elected US President Barack Obama has been given a second chance to keep his promises on human rights. This is the opinion expressed by Suzanne Nossel, Amnesty International USA executive director, in her statement following the victory of Barack Obama.

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“When President Obama was first elected in 2008, many human rights activists rejoiced. It had been eight long years where the United States tortured, detained hundreds without charge and trial and tried to justify the horrors of Abu Ghraib. President Obama’s first campaign for the White House offered the promise of an administration that would recapture the United States’ credibility on human rights issues, bringing detention practices in line with international law, repudiating secrecy and ensuring that human rights weren’t traded away in the name of national security,” the statement says.

Nevertheless, according to Suzanne Nossel, during the first tenure of Barack Obama “human rights were pitted against national security interests.”

“When it comes to countering terrorism, President Obama has hidden behind national security imperatives to shield administration policy in secrecy and pursue programs such as expanded drone use and thwarted accountability,” added Suzanne Nossel.

Meanwhile, ongoing US violations of human rights are not limited to the sphere of foreign policy and fight against terrorism. The country’s penal system also raises serious human rights concerns.

According to Penal Reform International, as a result of its history of slavery and discrimination, the United States is a very punitive nation with the largest prison system in the world and continued use of the death penalty despite international condemnation.

Moreover, as Human Rights Watch (HRW) states in its World Report 2012, imposed sentences are sometimes marred by racial disparities. Michelle Alexander, professor of law at Ohio State University and author of the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, is also convinced that the American legal system operates to discriminate against poor African Americans despite being officially colorblind.

Many observers consider unjustified detention of Guantanamo prisoners a violation of international law. For instance, in late January 2012 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressed her “deep disappointment” that the US government had failed to close the military prison despite Barack Obama’s promise to do so three years ago.

Furthermore, the UN official stressed that an attempt to expand the US powers to detain terrorism suspects and to accord legitimacy to the arbitrary practices of detention of such persons without trial, which is reflected in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), violates international law.

Meanwhile, World Report 2012 points also to the violation of labor rights in the United States. According to Human Rights Watch, hundreds of thousands of children, most of who are of Latin American descent, work on US farms. Therefore, HRW has again urged the authorities to reconsider the archaic 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, under which the age of children involved in the work on small farms is not limited, the working hours are not set, and hazardous work is not prohibited for children older than 16.

“More than half of all working children who suffered fatal occupational injuries in 2010 worked in crop production, up from previous years. Many child farmworkers drop out of school, and girls are sometimes subjected to sexual harassment. Federal protections that do exist are often not enforced,” the report says.

Along with the aforementioned violations of human rights, the organization also points to the imperfections in the health care system.

“HIV infections in the US continued to rise at an alarming rate in 2011, particularly in minority communities. Many states continue to undermine human rights and public health with restrictions on sex education, inadequate legal protections for HIV-positive persons, resistance to harm-reduction programs such as syringe exchanges, and failure to fund HIV prevention and care,” the document says.

In particular, HRW reported that some state laws and policies in Mississippi are blocking access to HIV treatment and services, where half of those testing positive for HIV are not in care and the death rate from AIDS is 60 percent higher than the national average.

Furthermore, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated that it continues to receive information on killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, and other forms of violence and exclusion against gay people.

Russian officials have also repeatedly raised the issue of human rights violations in the United States. In particular, during the parliamentary hearing at the Russian State Duma titled “On Problems of Human Rights Compliance by the United States of America” special attention was paid to abuse of children adopted from Russia.

Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Pavel Astakhov stressed that over the past 10 years, US citizens killed 19 foster children from Russia; some more died of disease or were killed in accident. At the same time, the citizens of Italy and Spain, who traditionally adopt a large number of Russian orphans as well, fulfill their obligations, avoiding such incidents, the Ombudsman said.

Many participants of the parliamentary hearing raised the issue of the US double standards in the punishment for child abuse. So, for the murder of their adopted son from Russia Ivan Skorobogatov the Cravers were sentenced to 16 months in prison, but Elizabeth Escalona who beat her 2-year-old daughter was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Nevertheless, in some areas, Barack Obama has significantly changed the American policy on human rights for the better. This is the opinion expressed by Anthony Dworkin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, expert on human rights, international justice and international humanitarian law.

“For instance, he has been much more engaged with international processes like returning to the United Nations Human Rights Council and resuming cooperation with the International Criminal Court,” he explained.

“On the other hand, Obama significantly increased the US drone strikes and I don’t think he set up any kind of adequate framework for when the strikes should be used. Furthermore, he hasn’t changed American policy on Guantanamo considerably,” the analyst added.

According to Anthony Dworkin, it is very unlikely that Obama will be able to close Guantanamo in the second term.

“I think in principle Obama would like to do it – the administration continues to say that this is their objective. On the other hand, there is couple of reasons why I think it is not going to happen. First of all, his hands are tied in large part by Congress which has made it difficult to move the detainees out of Guantanamo to other places. The second problem is the situation in Yemen. Large number of the Guantanamo detainees are from Yemen and US is not going to return them to the country where the security situation may worsen. However, it is very noticeable that he has not brought any new people to Guantanamo since he became President. But since they are already in American custody it’s more difficult for him to release them without appearing to be taking steps that are dangerous to American security,” the expert explained.

In turn, Professor Koshi Yamazaki, Dean of the Graduate School of Law, Kanagawa University stressed that human rights could only be enjoyed under the peace circumstances, adding that he fully agrees with Barack Obama’s political efforts toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

However, in his opinion, the US has been keeping double standard in the application of the international human rights standards.

“Economic, social and cultural rights of vulnerable people, especially of poor, African Americans and Native Americans, have been underestimated in these four years. I hope Barack Obama will take social rights issues more seriously in his second term,” Koshi Yamazaki said.

Yvonne Bangert, expert on indigenous peoples of the Society for Threatened Peoples also called attention to a complicated social problem of respect for American Indians’ human rights.

“President Obama made some important steps towards accepting the official body of the Native American Tribal Councils, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), as eye to eye negotiating partner. During his first term he held annual meetings with NCAI, hired Native Americans as advisors to his administration,” she said.

Moreover, in 2009 the US President signed an agreement to pay 3.4 billion dollars compensation to settle claims that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has mismanaged the revenue in American Indian trust funds, potentially ending one of the largest and most complicated class action lawsuits ever brought against the United States.

“Asked about his opinion about tribal sovereignty by the renowned Native American Newspaper “Indian Country Today” the president confirmed, that he believes, “that treaty commitments are paramount law, and I will strive to fulfill these commitments as president. This means providing quality, affordable health care and improving education quality on reservations across America.” Moreover, in his first speech after his re-election, President Obama said, that he intends to be the president of all Americans and explicitly named Native Americans as being equal part of the Nation,” the expert noted.

However, according to her, there are still many problems to be solved.

“Some Native Americans are still trying to retrieve their territories, the other are trying to save their lands from being turned into the national nuclear waste dump. Pine Ridge reservation is still one of the poorest spots in the US with up to 85% unemployment, life expectancy of 49 years of age, high suicide rate among young Native American people. 39% of the Lakota people live without drinking water, electricity or heating,” Yvonne Bangert explained.

In turn, the Bundestag deputy Katrin Werner, member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid at the German Parliament, called the results of work of the first Obama administration on human rights ambiguous.

“In part this may be due to internal social upheavals in the US. Against the background of excessive expectations Barack Obama did not fulfill many of his promises. Perhaps he could not implement them because of restrictive policies of Republicans,” she said in an interview with news agency “PenzaNews.”

“Of course, the United States is a democracy. However, there are a number of serious human rights violations there, including continued existence of the death penalty in many US states; continued operation of the detention camp at Guantanamo; poor conditions in prisons; the existence of openly racist, xenophobic, homophobic and anti-emancipatory tendencies or movements that have penetrated deep into the American society; no or inadequate access of significant part of the population to basic economic, social and cultural human rights standards in the area of housing, education, training, work and health; insufficient social support for the poor, homeless and other vulnerable people,” Katrin Werner added.

In the meantime, the greatest success of the first Obama administration, according to the deputy, was the health care reform, which allowed more than 40 million US women to get access to basic health care.

Mark Lagon, Georgetown University professor, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and former US Ambassador to Combat Trafficking in Persons, said that the greatest effect of President Obama’s tenure had been for a non-white leader to be in the White House.

“It is an emblem of openness and opportunity in the American system — practice matching theory,” he emphasized.

Moreover, the expert said that gay rights advocates consider same sex marriage law a significant step to protect the rights of gay people.

However, according to the professor, some serious problems are still need to be solved.

“There was no quantum leap in opportunity for minorities, the number of women in poverty has increased, and the longterm future of undocumented immigrants has not been clarified legally and deportations have increased,” Mark Lagon explained.

“President Obama should have a policy more in sync with his rhetoric as candidate in 2008. Use of drones and lack of success deconstructing excessive detention infrastructure more thoroughly clash with Obama’s words in 2008. Drones in particular become a symbol of a US willing to fight terrorism from afar without risking US lives, but risking those of innocents through collateral damage,” he said.

Asked about the fate of the Guantanamo prisoners, the expert suggested that the prison would continue to operate during the President’s second term.

“Guantanamo will not be closed during Barack Obama’s second term, even though I hope it will to close a chapter whereby the world views the US – sometimes unfairly – as mistreating detainees as it urges others to promote basic rights,” Mark Lagon concluded.