GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations Human Rights Council on Thursday unanimously approved an international treaty that would ban states from abducting perceived enemies and hiding them in secret prisons or killing them.
The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance would require states to keep registers of detainees and tell their families the truth about their disappearance, as well as paying compensation.
It still has to be adopted in the U.N. General Assembly, and then individual governments would need to approve it.
Rights experts say the United States, in the spotlight over allegations it has been transferring terrorism suspects to secret jails in other countries, is not expected to ratify the pact.
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The United States, which has only observer status at the forum, wanted the treaty to provide "a defense of obedience to superior orders" in a criminal prosecution.
That's the 'I was only following orders' defense. Snubbing this treaty is just an extension of Bush's 2002 refusal to sign on to the International Criminal Court. He simply refuses to be held to account on the world stage.
The practice of extraordinary rendtion reportedly began in the mid-1990s under Bill Clinton, however:
Initially, the procedure was applied primarily to individuals for whom there were outstanding arrest warrants. After the 9/11 attacks the program appears to have been expanded and some believe it now encompasses individuals for whom there are but vague suspicions. Critics charge that the program has "spun out of control", and has been used against large numbers of individuals. In a lengthy investigative report published by The New Yorker in February 2005, journalist Jane Mayer cited Scott Horton, an expert on international law who helped prepare a report on renditions issued by N.Y.U. Law School and the New York City Bar Association, as estimating that 150 people have been rendered since 2001.
The procedure of keeping ghost detainees, who are prisoners kept hidden from international watchdog groups like the Red Cross, has also drastically increased under the Bush administration according to human rights groups.
There simply is no way to know how many people have been 'disappeared' by the US government and others who have enabled such practices. The fact that the US would refuse to ratify this new treaty will once again place the country in the company of those who practice the most loathesome human rights abuses worldwide.
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