Human rights 'invisible' in US election campaign

It should be a cause for concern around the world that human rights have not been on the agenda for either candidate throughout the US presidential election campaign, says Amnesty InternationalUp until Hurricane Sandy hit the north-eastern seaboard of the United States last week, it was widely noted among commentators that climate change had been conspicuous by its absence during weeks of presidential election campaigning. Messrs Obama and Romney simply did not mention it. Moderators of the television debates did not ask about it. It was a forgotten topic, a non-issue.

It is not the only subject that went AWOL during the US elections. Another has been the topic of human rights. The future of Guantánamo? Unmentioned. The policy of remotely killing with drones? Skipped. The future of the Middle East and North Africa after the Arab Spring? Ignored – only the killings at the US consulate in Benghazi and the Israel-Iran stand-off merited mention. Much the same can be said about Afghanistan, certainly in respect of the fragile state of women and girls' human rights ahead of the withdrawal of international forces in 2014. Similarly, the future of key human rights negotiations like the stalled discussion over a new global treaty to regulate the arms trade: invisible. Even the human rights catastrophe that is Syria got little more than passing mentions.

True, nobody was expecting lengthy stump speeches about the USA's position on human rights from either candidate. But compare this election to 2008's. Then, in the lead-up to November 6, the presidential candidate Barack Obama declared "As president, I will close Guantánamo, reject the Military Commissions Act and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists."

The question of how – lawfully – to combat armed extremists who might attack the US and its interests was at least up for debate. Pulling back from the dangerous excesses of the Bush-era war on terror was a live issue. John McCain, though vying to be a Republican successor to the two-term George W Bush, echoed Obama in pledging to close Guantánamo. In a clear jibe at President Bush's unilateralist excesses, McCain cautioned that: "Our great power does not mean that we can do whatever we want, whenever we want."

This all feels like an age ago. Neither of this year's candidates now seems capable of raising their sights above the fiercely fought over terrain of the US economy. Yet, even on home turf there are important human rights issues that deserve to be aired. Is it really of no significance to voters in the USA that their country is thought to have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world? And, even more disturbingly, the US has an estimated 25,000 inmates held in high security isolation conditions, locked down in so-called "super-maximum security" prisons. The US is a world leader when it comes to locking people up, in some cases isolating prisoners in single, windowless cells for years at a stretch.

Meanwhile, the US continues to send dozens of its prisoners to execution chambers across the country. Aside from gun ownership and illegal immigration, crime and punishment has not figured in this campaign, yet the country's conveyor belt of executions has rumbled on throughout the last four years. Last year the US executed 43 prisoners – the fifth highest number of any country in the world – in 2010 46 were killed, and in Obama's first presidential year 37 condemned prisoners were despatched. This year another 35 have been added to this death toll. Neither Obama nor Romney deem this worthy of comment, despite the fact that over 160 people have gone to their deaths, including Troy Davis, executed last year amid huge international controversy.

Disturbingly enough, the US keeps company with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq on the issue of capital punishment, while its shocking insistence that it will indefinitely detain 48 'enemy combatants' at Guantánamo without either charge or trial is a move deeply unworthy of a nation that prides itself in being an enlightened 'beacon' in the world.

Human rights are this campaign's invisible issue, the topic that dare not speak its name. Its absence should be a concern to the world's diplomats, politicians and anyone worried that we are moving into the next four-year cycle with little reassurance that the US will strive to uphold human rights at home or abroad. The US economy might be of global significance, but so is the USA's stance on human rights issues. It is not just the economy, stupid.

(2012-11-06/publicserviceeurope)