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Faith Groups Part of Human Rights Coalition Urging Biden to Ease Sanctions Amid Pandemic
"For too long, the United States has reflexively relied on suffocating, broad-based sanctions with absolutely no regard for their impact on everyday people."
Mar 26, 2021
As U.S. economic sanctions continue to have devastating effects on people in targeted countries amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis, 55 humanitarian and civil society groups on Friday sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to "take immediate emergency measures" to allow people in sanctioned nations to have access to life-saving medical and other goods and services during the pandemic.
"The regular U.S. use of economic sanctions has had a devastating humanitarian impact on communities, with women and girls often the hardest hit."
--Sara Haghdoosti,
Win Without War
The letter from the groups--including human rights and faith-based organizations--praises Biden's announcement on his second day in office that his administration would review all existing U.S. sanctions "to evaluate whether they are unduly hindering responses to the Covid-19 pandemic."
Noting that the pandemic "has highlighted the precarious and, in some cases, critical state of the health infrastructures and economies of sanctioned countries and locations," the letter warns that "without immediate intervention, millions of people will continue to face severe economic hardship, infection, and death."
"Civil society, independent experts, and officials have noted that, even prior to the pandemic, sanctions were already causing shortages of medical supplies, decimating livelihoods, blocking banking channels, and exacerbating already dire situations in places like Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Syria," it continues.
\u201c"A coalition of 55 advocacy...& progressive organizations, including @amnestyusa @codepink @justfp & @DemandProgress, is...sending their own letter to Biden to demand that the administration indefinitely suspend broad-based #sanctions on civilian sectors" https://t.co/i0JGQZ46A9\u201d— CEPR (@CEPR) 1616779835
"These targeted locations now represent severe global security vulnerabilities, as these populations remain at high risk of infection and, in most cases, current sanctions regulations still prevent meaningful responses from the humanitarian community," the letter asserts. "The virus presents an overwhelming challenge to these under-resourced health infrastructures."
"As a result, sanctioned countries and locations could continue to be, or could become, hotbeds of infection for years, and provide ample opportunities for the virus to mutate into more contagious and deadly strains," the letter warns, concluding with a call for Biden to "take immediate emergency measures and consider long-term measures as well, that would allow the peoples of sanctioned countries and locations to respond to the devastating human and economic fallout of Covid-19."
Sara Haghdoosti, deputy director of letter signatory Win Without War, said in a statement that "for too long, the United States has reflexively relied on suffocating, broad-based sanctions with absolutely no regard for their impact on everyday people."
"At any time--but especially during a pandemic--these sanctions regimes are inhumane, deadly, and a threat to global health," Haghdoosti added. "On top of it all, they are proven to undermine the work of changemakers struggling for progress within sanctioned countries. This is a no-brainer: it's time for reform."
As the letter alludes, U.S. sanctions were killing people before the pandemic. According to a 2019 report by the progressive think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research, as many as 40,000 Venezuelans have died due to U.S.-led sanctions, which have made it much more difficult for people to obtain food, medicine, and other necessities. The pandemic has only made such privation and suffering more acute.
\u201c84 million Iranians are double suffering from Covid and US sanctions at the same time, and no US media cared to ask President Biden why the failed maximum pressure policy is still practically in place! \n\nDoes Human Rights also divided into good and bad?!\n#doublestandards\u201d— Sara Massoumi (@Sara Massoumi) 1616702446
Dina Behzadi, a student at Tehran University in Iran, told Borgen Magazine last November that "ever since [former President Donald] Trump reimposed sanctions in my country, it has been very difficult for me and my family financially. Food such as eggs and meat are very expensive. Sometimes, I have to stand hours in line at a subsidized grocery store for affordable meat rations."
"My country has been hit very hard due to the virus. I plead for these restrictions to be lifted for only a short time so that my country is able to access basic things like food and medicine."
--Dina Behzadi,
Iranian student
"My country has been hit very hard due to the virus," she added. "I plead for these restrictions to be lifted for only a short time so that my country is able to access basic things like food and medicine."
Yifat Susskind, executive director of the global women's rights group MADRE, said Friday in a statement supporting the letter that "the regular U.S. use of economic sanctions has had a devastating humanitarian impact on communities, with women and girls often the hardest hit."
"In much of the world, women and girls shoulder the responsibility of caring for family members and securing basic needs for their households," said Susskind. "By raising food and fuel prices, weakening water infrastructure, and making medical equipment and care harder to access, economic sanctions only deepen these burdens."
Friday's letter follows a resolution passed earlier this week by the United Nations Human Rights Council urging all member states to stop using unilateral sanctions as "tools of political and economic pressure," as well as a letter from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) imploring the Biden administration to end the ban on diesel swaps "to provide lifesaving relief for millions of Venezuelans" and an earlier letter from 27 progressive U.S. lawmakers urging the president to "consider the humanitarian impact" and "catastrophic" consequences of sanctions.
\u201cCalls for sanctions relief have likewise grown louder in Washington, with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy penning a letter urging the Biden administration to lift the ban on diesel swaps. https://t.co/iycVFGYIp6\u201d— venezuelanalysis.com (@venezuelanalysis.com) 1616716180
Standing in stark contrast with the civil society groups' letter, the U.N. resolution, and Democrats' efforts, a bipartisan group of Iran hawks in Congress led by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Thursday sent their own letter urging Biden to "use the full force of our diplomatic and economic tools" in relations with Iran.
That letter was signed by 43 senators--28 Republicans, 14 Democrats, and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine.
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Not a Straight White Man? U.S. Religious Conservatives Are Coming for You
Unless you are part of the narrow demographic of rich, white men deemed to have rights in 1776, this new Trump administration commission won't protect you
Aug 04, 2019
Any schoolchild in the United States knows that the US Declaration of Independence guarantees individuals' rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
Now, imagine what these principles mean for right-wingers and religious fundamentalists: where "life" refers to fetuses; "liberty" includes the prerogative to discriminate against LGBTIQ people; and "the pursuit of happiness" is reserved for straight, white patriarchs.
For more nightmare fuel, look no further than the new government body that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced earlier this month: The Commission on Unalienable Rights. For the uninitiated: this project's name might sound progressive, but it's most definitely not.
Everything we've heard about this Commission is full of coded language that's about as subtle as a brick through a window. This isn't business as usual - even for the Trump administration. It represents an acceleration of a longstanding fundamentalist agenda.
According to its statement of intent, the Commission is needed as human rights "discourse has departed from our nation's founding principles of natural law and natural rights".
In case you're wondering how to distinguish "natural" rights, they're the ones bestowed by God (at least according to Pompeo's commissioners). One of them, Peter Berkowitz, argues that Christianity is the source of all human rights. Another, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson, sees marriage equality for LGBTIQ people as a sign of the "End Times".
In typical fundamentalist fashion, this project seeks to impose the same interpretation of law and rights used for generations to uphold slavery, genocide, categorical disenfranchisement, marital rape, domestic violence, and the criminalisation of LGBTIQ lives. Turning the clock back 200 years: this is how Pompeo proposes to make America great again.
In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, the Secretary of State attacks "politicians and bureaucrats [who have created] new rights", and thus "blur the distinction between unalienable rights and ad hoc rights granted by governments". He also asserts that "rights claims are often aimed more at rewarding interest groups and dividing humanity into subgroups".
But people whose rights are in danger because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other real or perceived identity are not "interest groups". We are the majority of the world. And we've fought for generations to ensure that human rights frameworks are truly inclusive of all people. Now, this Commission wants to undo our gains.
The Commission chair, former US Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, says it will "work at the level of principle, not policy". This should set off alarm bells. Policies, after all, can be reversed. But principles set the parameters of what kinds of policies are even possible. That's their real aim: to circumscribe the range of acceptable ideas, scale back hard-won universal rights, and thus limit our possibilities.
We expect they'll start with foreign policy, taking a page from a tried-and-true playbook. For decades, what American ultra-conservatives couldn't get away with at home, they've exported abroad - through such heinous policies as the so-called Global Gag Rule, and the Helms Amendment, for instance, which have limited women's access to safe abortion services around the world.
And once these right-wing policies are established - and legitimated - in foreign policy, they're brought home to roost. Recently, a US court of appeals ruled that Trump's Domestic Gag Rule can go into effect (further limiting abortion access here as well).
As the directors of international organisations for women and LGBTIQ people, OutRight Action International, and MADRE, we're working to create a world of human rights and gender justice, where all people live free from violence and discrimination.
This work threatens the aims of ultra-conservatives, whose worldview depends on women being subservient within societies and LGBTIQ people disappearing altogether.
Their frontal assault is against abortion and the rights of LGBTIQ people, but that's only their opening salvo. Unless you are part of the narrow demographic of rich, white men deemed to have rights in 1776, they're coming for you too. In fact, their ideology threatens the vast majority of people - which is one reason it must be justified as "natural" and God-given.
The right's concerted attack on reproductive rights and LGBTIQ people reflects the centrality of gender as a system for asserting the control and domination they seek. They target us because we're upending that system. But allying feminist and LGBTIQ rights movements is more than a mutual defense pact: it's a strategy to defeat the right.
Just last month, our organisations won a major victory after a year-long campaign around a pending international treaty on crimes against humanity. We ensured that this draft treaty dropped an outdated definition of gender, affirming the rights of all people.
In that campaign, we saw many of the same attacks that are now embedded in Pompeo's new Commission - including claims that we were assaulting the 'natural order' and that our advocacy threatened traditional conceptions of rights.
One right-wing organisation C-FAM even claimed that our victory represented an attack by homosexual men on "our mothers and our sisters and our daughters". That might seem a strange charge against an effort led jointly by LGBTIQ and women's organisations, but they see the threat represented by our unified efforts and seek to drive a wedge between us.
One of the greatest successes of human rights advocates over generations is this: When our own governments and constitutions fail us, we can turn to international human rights to seek justice and reparation. We can share our testimonies about the abuses we've endured and, perhaps most importantly, change the global conversation. In doing so, we've influenced policies and practices at home and around the world.
Attacks on human rights, gender protections, and the multilateral system are a transparent attempt to close down that channel of progressive change-making. But by aligning our efforts as women's and LGBTIQ rights organisations, and making common cause with other progressive movements, we can face down this latest assault.
Right-wingers are not coming after us because we're weak. They're coming after us because they're afraid, we're strong, and we know how to take them on.
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New Draft of 'Crimes Against Humanity' Treaty Affirms Protection for Women and LGBTIQ Persons. The Fight Wasn't Easy--and It Isn't Over Yet
Whether the treaty makes its way into law or not, one thing is clear: History will remember that all of us working together can make a difference, because all of us, not some of us, have rights that must be protected
Jun 24, 2019
When it comes to the letter of the law, a few words can mean the difference between having your rights protected - or not.
Earlier this month, the International Law Commission (ILC) formally recommended a final draft of the new crimes against humanity (CAH) treaty for adoption by states--a treaty that promises to bring justice to victims of atrocities.
Previous drafts of the treaty adopted a 20-year-old definition of gender that isn't explicit on whether it includes LGBTIQ persons, and more broadly, women and men persecuted for not following oppressive dress codes or gendered roles prescribed by the perpetrators who abuse them.
There's a long history to this gender definition, how it came about, how it has come to be interpreted, and how we've ultimately settled the inclusion debate through advancements over the last twenty years of international law: You cannot persecute someone because of their gender, including when it is based on sexual orientation, gender identity or sex characteristics.
The final draft removed this outdated definition -- but getting the treaty to this point wasn't easy. It took immensely coordinated campaigning from MADRE, OutRight Action International and the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic at CUNY Law School.
The last twenty years of international law seemed to have settled thedebate. The bottom line: You cannot persecute someone because of their gender, including when it is based on sexual orientation, gender identity or sex characteristics.
There's never a justification for persecution. But not everyone agrees with international law. Fundamentalists who promulgate fear justify discrimination against women and LGBTIQ people by arguing that gender should be defined as male and female, conflating the term with sex and reinforcing a false binary. Their argument is that giving equal rights to women and LGBTIQ people destroys "feminine values." Their primary fear is that women will break out of "traditional roles", such as mothers and caretakers, and instead seek an education or join the workforce. (Seems they believe that woman can't do both). They try to erase LGBTIQ rights from the history books altogether since their very existence is inconvenient to their rigid gender narrative. Such distorted prescriptions also have consequences for men.
Last year, the International Law Commission (ILC), the body charged with the drafting, opened the new treaty to UN, state, and civil society comments. At first, our request to remove the outdated definition of gender was met with a chilly response from treaty supporters. The pushback was simple: the more changes to the language, the more risk that states won't adopt the treaty. Reasoning like this has consistently led to the de-prioritization of gender concerns in conflict, from sexual and reproductive health care to LGBTIQ-tailored responses.
Can civil society organizations make a difference in treaty negotiations?
Just ask Ray Acheson. She led the advocacy coalition on the Arms Trade Treaty and managed to secure a legally binding provision on gender-based violence. As Ray tells it, "At the beginning, we were getting questions [from governments] like, 'What does gender-based violence have to do with the arms trade? I don't get the connection.' By the end, we had a hundred states saying that it had to be in the treaty and it had to be legally binding."
MADRE, OutRight and CUNY Law followed suit and organized a world-wide campaign that called for the outdated definition of gender to be removed or revised in the new treaty.
Time was against us. We had one year to rally states, UN agencies, and civil society organizations to make submissions. We spent the first six months organizing experts' briefings in New York and London to work out our legal arguments on gender, sexual slavery, and other key components in the treaty.
Ultimately, we were able to pull together seven briefings with key receive feedback on our recommendations and legal reasoning developed from the experts' workshops. The first briefing was held with members of the International Law Commission, the second two with states, and the last four--each on a different subject--with civil society groups from around the world. We also distributed a toolkit in four languages to ensure that there was broad civil society input for the ILC on the gender language and other key provisions in the draft treaty.
CUNY Law School then compiled feedback from the workshops, briefings and consultations, for a submission to the ILC that offered a holistic legal analysis and recommendation to either remove or revise the gender definition in the draft CAH treaty. We then circulated the arguments and recommendations in five languages as a sign-on letter.
Nineteen out of 33 declared that the rights of women and LGBTIQ people are protected under international criminal law and that the pending treaty must reflect this principle. No state spoke against gender rights.
An astounding twenty-four UN Special Rapporteurs and other experts signed onto another submission that also echoed our legal reasoning. About 600 organizations and academics representing over 100 countries signed our open letter.
At least nine other civil society submissions also answered our call, including from 60 human rights organizations in Africa led by the Southern Africa Litigation Center, twelve transgender rights groups, two intersex groups, and Human Rights Watch.
The final result: the ILC formally adopted the draft treaty with the recommendation to remove the definition from the draft convention, citing to our arguments.
But the campaign isn't over. The ILC will hand off the crimes against humanity draft treaty to the UN General Assembly this autumn, where states will debate its language and decide its fate.
Whether the treaty makes its way into law or not, one thing is clear: History will remember that all of us working together can make a difference, because all of us, not some of us, have rights that must be protected.
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