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Look who's talking

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Why you can trust SCMP
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Although Washington is viewed by much of the world to have lost much of its moral authority because of such issues as Guantanamo Bay, where inmates are not accorded rights taken for granted in the United States, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, secret prisons, water-boarding and other forms of torture, it continues to sit in judgment on the rest of the world on their human rights record.

Every year, the US releases its country reports on human rights practices. While many countries may have felt humiliated in the past to be condemned, by and large such reports are accepted as a fact of life and, in fact, have lost much of their impact.

If the US wants its reports to be taken seriously, it should take more seriously other countries' views on human rights and agree to be bound by agreements reached at the United Nations.

The rights protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were codified by the UN in the 1960s into two covenants, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

When the US talks about human rights, it is thinking almost exclusively of the ICCPR. In fact, Washington has never even ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which it signed in 1979. This puts the US in the same situation as Belize, Cuba, Pakistan and South Africa.

Interestingly, while the US has ratified the ICCPR but not the ICESCR, China has ratified the ICESCR but not the ICCPR.

So while Washington emphasises political rights, Beijing gives priority to economic rights.

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