Human Rights Abuses Begin at Home

Lately, U.S. conduct abroad has triggered a number of inquiries into alleged -- and in some cases, undeniable -- violations of international human rights.

Photos testify that American troops have abused Iraqi prisoners in terrible ways. Some have argued that the U.S.'s practice of sending accused terrorists to be interrogated in countries where torture is permitted violates America's obligations under the U.N. Convention Against Torture. And allegations of U.S. guards' mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo seem all the more relevant as the Supreme Court decides whether U.S. federal courts can review detainees' claims.

Meanwhile, as the news gives Americans an education in international human rights issues, American citizens seem more willing to consider the possibility of violations right here at home.

In this column, I will consider one example of this trend: Chicago public housing project residents' contention that the conditions in which they are living amount to human right violations. They assert that, just as the world is paying attention to the human rights abuses taking place thousands of miles beyond our borders, it ought to pay equal attention to the human rights abuses taking place in Chicago.

Chicago Public Housing Residents Call in The United Nations

Last month, Miloon Kothari -- the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, who reports directly to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva -- flew to Chicago to meet a group of public housing residents.

They were residents of the Cabrini-Green development -- which is one of America's most notoriously dangerous public housing projects, as a result of a long history of neglect and gang activity. They had invited Kothari to visit partly out of desperation -- never expecting he would take their invitation seriously. (Kothari has never done an in-depth study on housing conditions in the United States.)

Currently, Chicago's plan to deal with public housing seems to be to demolish it: More than 20,000 units are slated to be razed as part of the city's 10-year plan to transform public housing. But public housing residents, organized through the Coalition to Protect Public Housing, point out that the result has hardly been an improvement: Some have been forced to move into homeless shelters and temporary dwellings because they are not given assistance in finding new residences.

The Cabrini-Green residents also told Kothari that they are not alone. President Bush has proposed drastic funding cuts for federal programs that provide subsidized housing for America's lowest income families. Just last week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it is changing the way it funds the 2004 housing choice voucher program. As a result, many local housing authorities will be short of the funds needed to cover all vouchers currently in use. Now, housing authorities across the country are planning for the possibility of having to terminate residents from the program, or otherwise cover funding shortfalls. It seems likely that across the nation, other public housing residents will be in the situation of many Cabrini-Green residents: going from inadequate housing, to no housing at all.

In his discussions with Cabrini-Green residents, Kothari acknowledged that there indeed seems to be a human rights crisis in the forced evictions of public housing tenants from their units.

International Law on the Right to Housing

Readers may wonder: Isn't housing a domestic issue? The answer is that international law clearly says otherwise. And here, I am not referring to unwritten international law principles -- but rather to treaties the U.S. has signed and ratified.

The U.S. has signed and ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which includes a right to protection from arbitrary or unlawful interference with one's home, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which prohibits actions with respect to housing that have the effect of discriminating against persons of color. (Most of Cabrini-Green's residents are African-American). It has also signed the American Convention on Human Rights, which requires progressive measures on the part of governments to fully realize adequate housing for all sectors of the population.