“Even a bad high school student,” President Donald Trump told a gathering of law and order officers on 8 February, could understand the language and intent of his Executive Order 3769 that suspended entry of all refugees into the United States for 120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely, and prohibited entry of citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries into the United States for 90 days. One day later, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals thought otherwise and refused to reinstate the Order in a carefully reasoned opinion. While the ultimate fate of the Muslim ban remains in limbo, it seems clear the Trump presidency is unlikely to be remembered for its vigorous championing of human rights. But it has already produced powerful forms of resistance that may put human rights center stage in the United States again. Why, again?
The United States has been slow to embrace international human rights treaties and norms.
The place of the United States in the making of a global human rights order had in fact significantly diminished long before Donald Trump appeared on the political scene. Beyond the culpability of the Bush administration in the practices of torture in the wake of 9/11, the reticence of the American state to engage in the global human rights order has a deep history. Since the 1950s, the United States has been slow to embrace international human rights treaties and norms. The US Senate ratified the Genocide Convention only in 1988, some 40 years after it was adopted by the United Nations. In 2017, the United States remains the only country in the world that has not signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and is among only seven countries that have failed to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The United States is also not a participant in the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals for crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The United States was only the 22nd country to legalize gay marriage.
