While both the President and Congress deserve much credit for passing this historic and long-overdue bill, equal attention must be paid now to the U.S. government’s failure to protect the youth who have already been forced into armed conflict. The U.S. shamefully continues to detain alleged former child soldiers at Guantánamo and U.S.-run facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan without recognizing their juvenile status or observing relevant international juvenile justice standards.

In its own report, issued last May to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, the U.S. government revealed that approximately 2,500 youths under the age of 18 have been held in Guantánamo Bay and U.S.-run facilities overseas, in some cases for months and years without ever being charged with a crime. As of April 2008, there were approximately 500 youths being held in U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq alone. The government report claims that it is holding Iraqi children in prison in order to educate them to "contribute positively to the future of Iraq."

On November 8, the eyes of the world will be focused on Guantánamo for the start of one of two first-ever trials accusing former child soldiers with war crimes. Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen held in Department of Defense custody since the age of 15, has been detained at Guantánamo on charges that include crimes he allegedly committed at the age of 10. The second trial, to be held next January, will be that of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan national captured at the age of 16, a young man whose case has been marred by ethical and legal problems, problems that have even led the government’s prosecutor to resign in protest last month.

Both Khadr and Jawad have claimed that they were subjected to torture and abuse in U.S. custody. Last week, in the first decision of its kind, a military judge found that subjecting Mohammad Jawad to systematic sleep deprivation under Guantánamo’s infamous "frequent flyer" program "constitutes abusive conduct and cruel and inhuman treatment." (PDF). The judge came close to determining that Jawad was subjected to torture but denied him the remedy of dismissing the charges, though he acknowledged that "other remedies are available to adequately address the wrong inflicted upon the accused, including, but not limited to, sentence credit towards any approved period of confinement, excluding statements and any evidence derived from the abusive treatment, and prohibiting persons who may have been involved in any improper actions against the Accused from testifying at trial."

So far, Guantánamo military commissions have only produced one full trial. But for all we know, the prospective trials, held within a tainted system that lacks independence and allows for the admission of evidence obtained through torture, will only magnify the mockery that has been made of American values of justice, especially the long-held cornerstone of the right to a fair trial.

In order for the U.S. to claim the moral high ground on combating the phenomena of recruiting and using child soldiers abroad, it has to show moral leadership and commitment by dismantling its military commissions and providing justice and a humane solution to Khadr and Jawad, a solution that would include measures for rehabilitation and reintegration to society.

Although the United States was one of the principal forces behind the creation of the UDHR, and claims to be an international leader in human rights, our own commitment to the UDHR has been undermined by its double standard approach where very often it was unwilling to apply the principles of the UDHR at home.

Today the ACLU announced the launch of a YouTube video contest for young human rights activists. Check out the instructions on our website on how to enter . The winner of the contest will receive round-trip airfare and lodging in New York City to accompany a delegation from the ACLU to the December 10, 2008, session of the United Nations General Assembly. On that day, the assembly will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Sixty years after the signing of the UDHR, the U.S. government is quick to point out other countries’ human rights abuses, while allowing our own protection of basic human rights and dignities to degrade. The United States cannot claim to be a leader on the issue of human rights when it inadequately responds to the needs of thousands of displaced people following Hurricane Katrina , very often turns a blind eye to racial and ethnic discrimination , is complicit in the administration of corporal punishment in our public schools and sentencing of juveniles to life without possibility of parole, denies justice to survivors of domestic violence and has people indefinitely detained and tortured in the name of national security.

The fundamental rights outlined in the UDHR clearly must also be protected here at home. Let’s raise awareness of U.S. obligations and shortcomings under the UDHR and international human rights law, in light of the upcoming 60th anniversary of this inspiring document.

Read the UDHR and share it with your friends, family and community. Enter the video contest and voice the UDHR in your own words. Sign the petition and ask your government to recommit to the UDHR.

Let’s pledge to dignity, liberty and justice for all. Let’s recommit to the UDHR.

The HDIM is Europe’s largest human rights conference, and the most significant OSCE event addressing human rights and democracy in Europe, North America and Central Asia. For two weeks, more than 1,000 government representatives, human rights defenders, scholars, members of civil society and journalists examined the processes and extent to which member countries of the OSCE have implemented their commitments to human rights and democracy.

The ACLU’s opening statement on the unfair trials held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, triggered an audible buzz from the U.S. delegation’s perch at the meeting. The ACLU statement delineated the inadequacy of the Military Commissions Act (MCA), signed into law by President George W. Bush in October, 2006, and noted its lack of "basic substantive and procedural protections codified in the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and numerous international human rights treaties ratified by the U.S." The statement strikes at the incredible inclusion of secret evidence, hearsay evidence and evidence obtained through torture that the MCA allows, and the imbalanced allocation of resources between the prosecution and defense. The statement calls for a special attention to the U.S. failure to meet international juvenile justice standards in its detention, treatment and prosecution of Omar Khadr and Mohammad Jawad who were under 18 at the time of their transfer to and imprisonment at Guantánamo and face charges before a military commission.

The formal response by the U.S. delegate mildly noted that the U.S. took note of the ACLU statement and that the issues raised by the ACLU are subject to debates in the U.S.; debates which consider pending legal cases before courts. He vaguely noted that there is accountability in the U.S., and that free press and independent courts check government actions. Several independent attendees at the meeting acknowledged the American statement as an attempt to gloss over the legitimate concerns of human rights organizations like the ACLU and the international community as a whole.

Freedom House representatives took advantage of this gathering to present their first-ever book written on an individual country (the United States) as a follow-up to a similar report they conducted on freedom in America about 20 years ago. Freedom House is known for its annual reports on freedom around the world in which countries are rated based on their record on civil and political rights. Freedom House’s statement attempted to counter increasing international frustration with U.S. policies and defend what is left of America’s damaged standing in the world. A former journalist from Moldova asked at the event what right the U.S. has to export democracy to the rest of the world.

The ACLU delivered a second statement on the state of capital punishment in the United States, highlighting the problems within a system that has exonerated 130 wrongfully accused death row prisoners in the last 35 years, provides inadequate counsel and access to the courts for indigent defendants, is fraught with procedural barriers that prevent death row prisoners from receiving adequate reviews of their cases, and is mired in racism — as found by the American Bar Association in a three-year study calling for a moratorium on executions.

Following this, the ACLU and Amnesty International packed the room in a joint round-table discussion entitled "The End of the ‘War on Terror’? The Future of Counterterrorism and Human Rights in the OSCE Region." Five U.S. delegates attended the meeting, with one representative gently reiterating the same points made at the Freedom House event a day earlier about America’s strengths in its independent judiciary and free press. These are no doubt American hallmarks and played a vital role in exposing secret government programs and thus checked its power, notwithstanding the repeated attempts by the U.S. administration to restrict dissenting speech and investigative reporting, as well as the government’s unsuccessful attempt to strip courts of their Habeas jurisdiction.

A special guest and speaker who agreed to join the ACLU and Amnesty International was Dr. Adam Bodnar from the Polish Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. Dr. Bodnar spoke about the ongoing investigation that was ordered by the Polish Prime Minister regarding reports by the media and human rights groups about secret U.S. detention facilities that operated on Polish soil. In 2007, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s report (PDF)
affirmed that "there is now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania."

A recent report by The New York Times sheds more light on the CIA black site, including the revelation that Khalid Sheik Mohammad was waterboarded 100 times while in CIA custody in Poland.

The presence of the American Civil Liberties Union at this high-level conference on international human rights and democracy was warmly welcomed by members of the OSCE and HDIM participants from foreign governments, civil society groups and media. Most other human rights organizations and non-governmental organizations attending the gathering have historically been from locations east of Vienna. The general feeling of the week’s proceedings made it abundantly clear that the next U.S. president’s administration will have to work diligently to re-establish America’s credibility to speak on human rights on any international platform.

When the incoming President takes or reaffirms the oath of office, they are committing themselves to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." In doing so, they are obliged to recognize and respect U.S. ratified treaties, at home and abroad. While this commitment is made to the American people at the inauguration ceremony, it echoes and resonates around the world, as the U.S. commitment to the family of nations to respect the rule of law and U.S. international and treaty obligations is vital to the preservation of international peace and security. The erosion of this commitment over the past seven years cannot be over exaggerated, especially in the area of protection and promotion of human rights at home and around the world.

One of the most important tasks facing the next President is how to reassert the commitment of the United States to the rule of law, including the constitutionally mandated obligations under international law. The new President will have a unique opportunity to send a clear message to the world regarding the reemergence of U.S. leadership through human rights protection and enforcement. Both major party presidential candidates are committed, at least rhetorically, to strengthening international laws and norms. For example, Senator John McCain told the Hoover Institution in May 2007:

[To] be successful international leaders, we need to be good international citizens. This means upholding and strengthening international laws and norms, including the laws of war. We must champion the Geneva Conventions, and we must fulfill the letter and the spirit of our international obligations. It is profoundly in our interest to do so, since our failure to abide by these rules puts our own soldiers at risk. Our moral standing in the world requires that we respect what are, after all, American principles of justice. Our values will always triumph in any war of ideas, and we can’t let failings like prisoner abuse tarnish our image. If we are model citizens of the world, more people around the world will look to us as a model.

Senator Barack Obama echoed Senator McCain when he stated:

[S]ince the founding of our nation, the United States has championed international law because we benefit from it. Promoting - and respecting - clear rules that are consistent with our values allows us to hold all nations to a high standard of behavior, and to mobilize friends and allies against those nations that break the rules. Promoting strong international norms helps us advance many interests, including non-proliferation, free and fair trade, a clean environment, and protecting our troops in wartime. Respect for international legal norms also plays a vital role in fighting terrorism. Because the Administration cast aside international norms that reflect American values, such as the Geneva Conventions, we are less able to promote those values abroad.

Generally speaking, when people in the U.S. think about human rights, they tend to associate them with what happens overseas. This common misperception is largely a result of deliberate policy to exempt the U.S. from domestic human rights obligations. We are told that human rights are a foreign concept which belongs to the realm of U.S. foreign policy, within the exclusive jurisdiction of the State Department and the congressional foreign relations committees. Fortunately, the last few years have seen America associate human rights more closely with U.S. conduct in the so-called “war on terror,” including the torture and abuse of detainees; renditions and disappearances; secret and indefinite detentions; Guantánamo; Bagram; and more.

There is no doubt that these will be among the most pressing issues faced by the new President on day one. That is why, and for good reason, most of the debate around human rights has focused on candidates’ commitment to the Geneva Conventions and other important treaties and laws the U.S. largely ignored over the past seven years. But for the new President to reclaim U.S. standing in the world and win the hearts and minds of the people aboard they will have to assert that the U.S. commitment to human rights and international law begins at home, in other words to lead by example.

Since 1992, the U.S. has ratified three major human rights treaties in addition to two optional protocols: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1992); Convention Against Torture (1994); Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (1994); and optional protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.Yet, very little was done to enforce these treaties and implement them to the benefit of all people in the U.S.

Moreover, little oversight and minimal legislative initiatives have focused on codifying the rights and obligations under these treaties and protocols. In most cases, U.S. action has been limited to the periodic reporting and review process by the Geneva-based committees monitoring compliance with these treaties. International human rights treaties should not be seen as merely nonbinding international commitments between countries with no domestic effect, but rather must be treated as the supreme law of the land — exactly how the Framers of the U.S. Constitution intended. This will require all branches of government to engage proactively to bring current policies and laws into compliance with treaty obligations. To do so, the next President will have to work with Congress to implement these commitments by transforming them into detailed domestic laws, policies, and programs.

This is the only way the President will be true to their oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”

In Mississippi, African-American boys are punished at 1.7 times the rate that would be expected given their numbers in the student population.

African-American girls in Mississippi are 2.2 times as likely as white girls to be paddled, a number that exceeds rates in other states. There is no evidence that these students commit disciplinary infractions at disproportionate rates.

…Alternative discipline methods, such as detention, loss of privileges and reinforcement of good behavior can better address students’ needs and are being implemented in school districts from Chicago to Kentucky. School children in Mississippi deserve no less.

Alice is the author a new report about the use of corporal punishment in public schools. Called A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools, the report focuses specifically on the use of physical punishment in schools in Mississippi and Texas. You can also discuss the use corporal punishment on The Washington Post’s Rights Watchers discussion group.

Cheek was heading to China not as an athlete, but as a human rights activist: He heads Team Darfur, a coalition of nearly 400 athletes, 72 of whom are competing in the upcoming Olympic games, who work to raise awareness about the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region. Team Darfur’s advocacy has included criticism of the Chinese government’s support of the regime in Darfur.

Cheek suspects his visa has been revoked because of his outspokenness against the Chinese government about its policies supporting the Sudanese government. But when he asked for an explanation as to why he’s been shut out of the country, he was told that the Chinese visa office wasn’t required to give one.

While it might not be much of a shock to hear that China is censoring speech, it’s less known that the U.S. government does the same exact thing. It’s a practice called ideological exclusion. The practice was born during the Cold War in an effort to keep suspected Communists out of the country — resurrected by the Patriot Act, today it’s used by our government to keep out scholars, artists, and political figures whose views run contrary to the Bush administration’s. (Check out our timeline of those who have been excluded in the past.).

The ACLU is fighting two cases of ideological exclusion. One is that of Professor Tariq Ramadan, a renowned scholar of Islam; the second is that of South African scholar Adam Habib. Both are academics the Departments of State and Homeland of Security (DHS) have excluded based on their political views. The ACLU suspects that Habib’s criticism of the war in Iraq, and Ramadan’s criticism of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East are what’s keeping these two noted scholars out of the country. The U.S. government’s actions are preventing Professor Ramadan and Professor Habib from attending speaking engagement in the U.S. and have the effect of censoring the ideas U.S. audiences are allowed to hear.

In both cases, the U.S., like China, originally refused to disclose its reason for excluding Professor Ramadan and Professor Habib. After the ACLU went to court, the government claimed that the exclusions were based on national security concerns. Melissa Goodman, one of the ACLU attorneys who’s representing Habib and Ramadan, wrote in the U.K.’s Mail & Guardian last year:

National security should not to be used as a guise to silence critical or controversial views. By following a policy of ideological exclusion, the US government seems to be ignoring the hard lessons of history. When the Congress repealed the Cold War era communist exclusion laws, it determined that "it is not in the interests of the United States to establish one standard of ideology for citizens and another for foreigners who wish to visit the United States", and that ideological exclusion caused "the reputation of the United States as an open society, tolerant of divergent ideas" to suffer.

The imposition of an ideological litmus test at the border betrays those principles. What the US needs most is to be engaged with the world and open to criticism, not — isolated from it.

One of the reasons the International Olympic Committee awarded the upcoming games to China was to give that country the opportunity to show the world that its record on human rights has improved. But as both China and the U.S. have shown, it still has a long way to go.

Steven’s just returned from observing some procedural hearings at Guantanamo. But his specialty, however, is mounting legal challenges to the U.S. rendition program: Steven represented Khaled El-Masri in El-Masri v. Tenet, a lawsuit against former CIA director George Tenet. The lawsuit charged that Tenet and several U.S.-based aviation corporations violated U.S. and universal human rights laws when they abducted El-Masri, beat him, drugged him, and transported him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. El-Masri, a German national, was never charged with any crime, and after five months of detention, was dumped on a hillside in Albania and left to find his way back to his family in Germany, without explanation or an apology. After his case was dismissed in federal court, and the Supreme Court’s refused to review that decision in October of last year, the ACLU filed a petition in April with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on behalf of El-Masri. The petition asks the IACHR to declare that the extraordinary rendition program violates the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man; to find the U.S. responsible for violating El-Masri’s rights under that Declaration; and to recommend that the U.S. publicly acknowledge and apologize for its role in violating El-Masri’s rights to be free from arbitrary detention and torture.

Steven is also the attorney behind Mohamed v. Jeppesen, the lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, which the CIA contracted to provide flight services for its rendition program. (You can watch a video of Steven talking about the Jeppesen lawsuit on YouTube.) In February, a district court in San Jose bowed to the Bush administration’s claim that litigation of this case would threaten state secrets. The ACLU is now appealing this case to the 9th Circuit.

Join us this afternoon at 3 p.m. (EDT) on Firedoglake for what promises to be a fascinating discussion!

In Soldiers of Misfortune , a recently released U.S. report about child soldiers, the ACLU reported that as many as 23 detainees were under 18 when they arrived at Guantánamo between 2002 and 2004, based on documents released by the government under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Associated Press.

There’s a big difference between eight and 23.

But the U.S. government has shown little interest in setting the record straight. Some news reports estimate as many as 60 detainees were under the age of 18 when they arrived at Guantánamo.  The birthdates of 20 are listed as “unknown.” While the U.S. government claims that it can’t verify the ages of prisoners who claimed to be children when imprisoned at Guantánamo, the Department of Defense’s pleading of ignorance is no excuse for reflexively treating all the prisoners as adults.

The most famous of these young detainees is Canadian Omar Khadr, who was 16 when he was captured. On his charge sheet (PDF), he’s accused of associating with Al-Qaeda when he was 10 years old. When he was 16, he was shot in the back twice by U.S. forces after a firefight in Afghanistan. Evidence that was accidentally released during a hearing in February, plus a videotape released in April, both suggest that Khadr may well be innocent of some of the most serious charges brought against him. Right now the government is attempting to prevent Khadr’s attorneys from seeing even more evidence that may prove his innocence.

In April, a military judge denied Khadr’s motion to dismiss his case on the grounds that Khadr should be treated as a child under the United Nations’ Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child —which the United States ratified in 2002. The judge’s reasoning? He’s an adult now.

Khadr was held by U.S. forces for two years before he even saw a lawyer, which suggests that the U.S. government was waiting for him to "age out" of juvenile status to charge him. While he waited to be old enough to be unlawfully tried, his attorney reports that he was tortured repeatedly.

In the CRC’s concluding observations (PDF) on the U.S.’s compliance with the Optional Protocol, the U.N. suggested that the U.S. detain children "as a measure of last resort," and "if in doubt regarding age, young persons should be presumed to be children."

The U.S. has so far done neither.

The other teen mentioned in Crider’s article is Yasser Talal Al Zahrani, who was 17 when he was captured and sent to Gitmo. He committed suicide in June 2006. The ACLU sued the Pentagon in April, asking a court to order the release of any and all documents relating to deaths at Guantánamo. The lawsuit followed a FOIA request filed in 2006, to which the Pentagon was unresponsive.

The problem for Mukasey is that no one is lining up behind someone who will be in forced retirement in a little more than six months. And certainly Congress isn’t going to drop everything and follow Mukasey’s crazily ambitious proposal for Congress to both declare a new war and gut habeas corpus protections.

Mukasey offered a multi-part plan to violate the Constitution. He demanded that Congress declare a new “armed conflict” (which is Bush-speak for a new declaration of war) that would give a president worldwide power to declare anyone a terrorist and hold the person forever - without ever charging anyone with a crime. Mukasey also asked Congress to enact the Bush Administration’s scheme for undermining the recent Supreme Court decision restoring constitutional habeas corpus protections to the detainees at Guantanamo. The main goal of the proposed new Bush rules restricting habeas rights is to try to block federal judges from ever learning the truth about the deliberate and widespread use of torture and abuse inflicted on detainees. Judges would not be allowed to see evidence of torture and abuse and would instead simply have to trust that a president is holding the right people as terrorists.

That is far more power than any president should have. No president should be able to simply declare someone picked up anywhere in the world (including in the United States itself) to be a terrorist or associated with a terrorist, imprison the person forever without charge based on the determination of a president alone, and then hide from courts the evidence being used to hold the person - even if it was beaten out of a witness. The Supreme Court has already said no four times to past Bush Administration schemes to violate the law in holding detainees. Mukasey is looking for slap-down number five.

The only good news in all of this is that not only is there almost no time left in this Congress to pass this sweeping violation of the Constitution, but the House and Senate Judiciary Committees are hostile committees for this scheme. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy politely, but firmly, told the Bush Administration yesterday that he is not pulling his committee into another Bush plan to violate the Constitution (and the Ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, has spent years working with Chairman Leahy to try to restore the very habeas protections that Mukasey wants to gut). Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has been leading a year-long probe into whether high-level Bush Administration officials committed or authorized crimes of torture and abuse - and he has repeatedly demanded that Mukasey appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate any torture crimes ordered at the top levels of government. Conyers is certainly not going to have his committee be complicit in the latest Bush Administration plan to cover-up torture and abuse crimes.

As the clock ticks down, there certainly is a lot of work for Congress to do. But the work is in repairing the damage done to the Constitution over the past seven years, not in causing more harm.

UPDATE: Sign our petition to tell Congress to reject endless war and a torture cover-up.

Noting his concerns about the poor quality of legal representation received by capital defendants in Alabama and Texas, Alston recommended that the two states establish well-funded, statewide public defender systems. He also stated that the states should establish another method of choosing a judiciary other than elections.

In addition to these recommendations, Alston pointed out that federal court review of constitutional claims—claims based on rights outlined inthe Constitution—in death sentences has been sharply curtailed by federal legislation erecting procedural barriers to full review. Alston recommends that Congress pass new legislation that would eliminate these barriers.

Alston recognized that innocent people have been sent to death row and some have been executed. He strongly disapproved of the lack of urgency showed by Alabama and Texas officials to reform the criminal justice system.

The Special Rapporteur also criticized the U.S. government for thelack of fair trials for those incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay. Alston stated that any death sentence that arises from the unfair trials of "alien enemy combatants" would violate international law.

Many of these issues were highlighted in a report by the ACLU’s Human Rights Project and Capital Punishment Project to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.