On August 23, 2010, the United States State Department submitted its first domestic human rights report to the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC). In 2006, the HRC established the Universal Periodic Review process to assess each U.N. member nation’s adherence to their human rights obligations under international law every four years.

However, in addition to the federally submitted report, a comprehensive shadow report was also published by the U.S. Human Rights Network, a non-governmental human rights organization. The report represents a compilation of 26 independent civil society submissions covering a vast range of human rights issues, and has been endorsed by more than 200 human rights organizations and advocacy groups in the United States. In a statement released by the U.S. Human Rights Network, University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Sarah Paoletti, Senior Coordinator for the Network’s UPR Project, testifies: “Comparing the State Department report with the Network’s, it is clear that gaps remain in our respective understanding of the issues and the solutions needed to resolve them. We look forward to working with the Administration to narrow that gap in future months.”

The United States’ human rights record is scheduled for review in a series of hearings by the U.N. Human Rights Council on November 5th in Geneva, Switzerland.

August 19^th is World Humanitarian Day—a day to honor the work of the hundreds of thousands of women and men around the world determined to eradicate disease, poverty, and violence. Humanitarian aid workers strive to ensure that those in need of life-saving assistance receive it, regardless of their religion, nationality, race, or politics. The right to this assistance is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is guided by humanitarian principles that include neutrality, impartiality, and operational independence. However, in many parts of the world, there is growing skepticism about the integrity of humanitarian aid. In its worst manifestation, this skepticism has resulted in an increasing number of targeted attacks on humanitarian personnel. (Including the 2003 bomb attack in Baghdad that killed 22 UN employees and the UN Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello. World Humanitarian Day was originally initiated in recognition of this tragic event.) A healthier form of criticism is represented in films like Good Fortune—“a provocative exploration of how massive international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa may be undermining the very communities they aim to benefit.” The film shows a Kenyan man’s farm being flooded by an American investor who hopes to alleviate poverty by creating a multimillion-dollar rice farm and a woman’s business being demolished as part of a U.N. slum-upgrading project in Africa’s largest shantytown. Humanitarian assistance is both a right and a responsibility. However, it is clear that we—as a world community—still have far to go in figuring out how to do it both right and responsibly.

Despite recent years of tremendous economic growth, India is facing incredible challenges of how to address the desperate needs of its hungry and poor, as more than 421 million people live in poverty and nearly half of all children under five are underweight. Recent New York Times articles provide excellent coverage on this issue and a closer look at the life and challenges of India’s poor. While elected officials and experts agree on the need to reevaluate India’s failing social safety nets, they disagree on the roles of government and the market in hunger relief programs. The President of the ruling Indian National Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, is advocating for the creation of a constitutional right to food. But with widespread corruption in the existing food delivery systems, critics are skeptical that a constitutional right and expansion of the current system would solve the practical problems of distribution. Of course, Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly addresses the issue of hunger, stating “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food.” It will be fascinating to see how the world’s largest democracy will address perhaps the most complex issue facing our world today- the implementation of human rights ideals in a global reality of mass economic inequality.

Credit: Lynsey Addario for the NYTimes