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Ed Webb

State Department report will trim language on women's rights, discrimination - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...t-women-rights-abortion-420361

US USA humanrights diplomacy foreignpolicy rights politics

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • State Department officials have been ordered to pare back passages in a soon-to-be-released annual report on global human rights that traditionally discuss women’s reproductive rights and discrimination, according to five former and current department officials. The directive calls for stripping passages that describe societal views on family planning, including how much access women have to contraceptives and abortion.Story Continued Below A broader section that chronicles racial, ethnic and sexual discrimination has also been ordered pared down, the current and former officials said.
  • The annual human rights document is the product of a long and painstaking process of compiling information from U.S. embassies. An often dryly written explanation of conditions in dozens of nations, it can nonetheless cast a harsh light on governmental and societal practices.
  • While coercive measures by governments are expected to continue to be chronicled in this year’s report, the current and former officials said, many other elements on reproductive rights will likely not be.
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  • The revisions could force State officials to miss the statutory deadline of Feb. 25 to release the report.
  • the late request is evidence of ongoing managerial problems at State, where many top positions remain unfilled and a small group of aides to Tillerson have centralized power while slowing decision-making. The human rights bureau is one of several still lacking an assistant secretary more than a year into Tillerson’s tenure
  • The human rights bureau also has been directed to cut back a broader section in the various country reports generally called “discrimination, societal abuses and trafficking in persons.” Along with women’s reproductive rights, that section touches on topics such as anti-Semitism or pressures on the gay and lesbian community. It also includes discrimination that's not necessarily government-sponsored.
  • Last year, Tillerson broke with tradition and chose not to personally unveil his department’s human rights report — dismaying activists and lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who believe human rights should be a pillar of U.S. foreign policy.
Ed Webb

US urged to address racial injustice or risk further instability in new report | US new... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...k-community-injustice-analysis

US USA diplomacy analysis politics protests crisis ICG UN humanrights race racism NGO

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Jun 20 - Cached
  • the first time the group has written about the US domestic situation in such terms.
  • The United States “never adequately come to terms with the horrific legacy of two and a half centuries of chattel slavery. Nor has it healed or conquered the institutionalised violence and racism toward African Americans that followed their emancipation in the 1860s.”
  • The report implores Donald Trump, as well as prominent elected and security officials, to stop courting conflict with incendiary language and threats to deploy the military to quell civil unrest. 
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  • “Perhaps the most sobering political development as the protests reached the one-week mark was a growing inclination among some prominent elected and security officials to frame the civil unrest in the language of armed conflict,”
  • The killing, and the Trump administration’s response to the upheaval, risk further eroding the “global standing and credibility” of the US “particularly when it comes to condemning repression or brutality perpetrated by other governments”, the Crisis Group said.
  • On Wednesday, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, implored the US to confront “endemic and structural racism” and address the “deep-seated grievances” at the heart of the protests.  She assailed the president’s characterization of protesters as “terrorists” and condemned the “unprecedented assault on journalists”.  “The anger we have seen in the US, erupting as Covid-19 exposes glaring inequalities in society, shows why far-reaching reforms and inclusive dialogue are needed there to break the cycle of impunity for unlawful killings by police and racial bias in policing,”
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