Of the 7,780 single-bias incidents reported in 2008:

• 51.3 % were racially motivated (2,876 anti-Black incidents).
• 19.5 % were motivated by religious bias (1,013 anti-Jewish incidents).
• 16.7 % stemmed from sexual-orientation bias (1,584 anti-gay/bisexual incidents).
• 11.5 % resulted from ethnicity/national origin bias (1,148 incidents, 561 against Hispanics).
• 1.0 % were motivated by disability bias (85 anti-physical or anti-mental incidents).

What these data show is a need for renewed interest in building a civil society based on human rights.

The Origins of "Human Rights"

The development of a framework for human rights reaches back to the Greek city-states that conferred political rights on free male citizens, but even before that codes associated with such names as Hammurabi, Moses, Solon and Manu outline standards of conduct for fairly homogenous groups within limited territorial jurisdictions.

With the Enlightenment of the 1700s came new developments, in part based on the work of John Locke who took the control over one's soul away from the Church and gave it to the individual, thus clearly separating the realms of Church and State. His arguments concerning liberty and the social contract later influenced Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. So much so that several passages from his book, Second Treatise, are reproduced verbatim in the Declaration of Independence, most notably the reference to a "long train of abuses."

Following the American and French Revolutions, human rights developed slowly and deliberately with the abolition of slavery, the Seneca Falls proclamation of women's rights in 1848, and the rise of Liberal parties in Europe that agitated for parliamentary government, increased representation, expansion of the franchise, and the creation of a counterweight to monarchical power and feudal privilege.

However, from the ashes of the WWII rose up an effort in the newly formed United Nations to inspire humanity and enshrine basic codes that would prevent a repetition of horrors the Nazis and Japan had unleashed upon the human race.

On February 16, 1946, the United Nations established its Human Rights Commission and Eleanor Roosevelt was chosen to chair its effort to draft a Declaration of Human Rights. The commission's goal was to create a document that might help to prevent another war like what had just be waged and serve as a model for how human beings and nations should treat each other.

From 1946-1948 delegates to the United Nation's Commission on Human Rights discussed and drafted an international declaration on the subject of human rights that has become a standard of principles for human rights. The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the resulting Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by General Assembly resolution 217A at its 3rd session in Paris on 10 December 1948 as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected.

Roosevelt said:

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

Human rights are privileges inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.

Universal human rights are often expressed and guaranteed by law, in the forms of treaties, customary international law, general principles and other sources of international law. International human rights law lays down obligations of Governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups.

To date, the United States of America has never ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, nor many of the numerous documents which have flowed from it: the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; the Convention on the Rights of the Child; or the Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, just to name a few. For a complete list of Human Rights Treaties and those the US has ratified, click here.

We are the only nation on earth that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 1995, then-president Bill Clinton signed the CRC, but never submitted it to be ratified by the Senate. As such it has never become law in our nation. Considering it requires governments to provide health care and nutrition to children, one can only speculate as to why the "richest nation on earth" has chosen to ignore its children.

The United States did sign and ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1992 with five reservations, five understandings, and four declarations that meant its implementation would have little domestic effect. Among those issues the U. S. Senate took great exception to was the Covenant's article prohibiting the death penalty for individuals aged 18 years or less.

In 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Committee held hearings on the implementation of the standards agreed upon in the treaty. The Committee released a final report, which amounted to a moral indictment of the U.S. by the sheer number of treaty violations.

The Committee report was supported by the Coalition for Human Rights at Home, a coalition of 142 not-for-profit groups, that prepared a shadow report to the Committee's official report. The Coalition's 456-page report documented domestic human rights abuses that generally go unreported in the US. The report meticulously detailed over 100 instances of human rights violations as a response to the official report by the US. For the complete story see: The Raw Story.

For a good evaluation of the US reluctance at ratifying UN human right treaties, see Kenneth Roth's article The Charade of US Ratification that appeared in the "Chicago Journal of International Law" in 2000.

Given the horrors committed by the Bush administration at home and abroad, why do the American people not call out for the ratification and codification of these documents into our core of laws and protections? Why do we not have a human rights movement today?

In 2006, only 8% of adults and 4% of young people were aware of and could name the UDHR. A large majority of Americans, 83%, felt that the US should do more to live up to the principles of the UDHR. Two-thirds of the people polled (63%) said that the poor were usually discriminated against in our society. Americans also felt that the following are routinely discriminated against: the disabled (61%), the elderly (54%), gays and lesbians (51%), Native Americans (50%), African Americans (41%).

A possible answer the questions I posed above is because of our naïveté about our own Bill of Rights and the role it played in moving human rights forward. We tend to think that we have human rights in our country and believe "human rights" are issues in other parts of the world, in situations "less free" than our own country, where people are already in jail. Such a vision is myopic in scope.

Human rights are violated daily within the United States. When people are detained because they are SUSPECTED of being in this country illegally, their basic human rights are denied. When the government taps your phone, reads your e-mail, and opens your written correspondence because of your religious affiliation, political affiliation, or because of your skin color; human rights are being violated. Dying because you cannot afford the cost of health care is a violation of your human rights. Putting a person to death for a crime he/she did not commit is a violation of human rights. Imposing religious ideology as state law in regards to reproductive health, is a violation of human rights.

Next: Moving Beyond "Civil Rights"