UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs

In March 2023, the Promise Institute for Human Rights (Promise Institute), together with the Bringing Human Rights Home Network and the UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, convened its Annual Symposium on “Bringing Human Rights Home: Bridging the gap between the international and domestic frames for human rights in the United States.” The Symposium was one part of the Promise Institute’s week-long “Reimagining Rights in the Americas Conference”, which was held in conjunction with the 186th period of sessions of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR or the Commission) at UCLA from March 1 to 11, 2023. This introductory article has two objectives: first, to report on the activities of and outline the key themes arising from the Conference; and second, to outline how our work at the Promise Institute engages critically with the human rights frame and explores how it could be reimagined towards transformative ends, particularly in the Americas. This article is intended to supplement the rich engagement with the human rights frame and IACHR included in the other articles in this Symposium Issue.

This Article contends that the evolving approach of the inter-American human rights system toward the human rights of Indigenous peoples and persons of African descent, including their economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, presents a key opportunity for U.S. civil society actors to expand beyond the dominant framework of civil rights discourse and domestic litigation. At the same time, it recognizes that developments in inter-American standards present challenges for engagement with the U.S. government, which has resisted accountability for racial discrimination and rejected the recognition of economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights. This Article will be particularly relevant to scholars and advocates interested in the intersection of the international human rights framework with the domestic legal, political, and social frameworks in the United States, as well as with the struggles of communities for social justice and human rights.

For years, immigrants held at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in the U.S. state of Georgia, and the advocates with whom they shared their experiences, raised complaints about the abusive detention conditions they were subjected to at ICDC with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and with LaSalle Corrections, the ICE-contracted private, for-profit prison corporation that owns and operates ICDC. Those complaints went largely unaddressed. For years, immigrants and advocates called upon members of Congress and the international human rights community to safeguard the fundamental human rights of persons detained by ICE at ICDC, and other detention centers in rural Georgia, most notably the Stewart Detention Center, owned and operated by the GEO Group, and recognized as one of the deadliest ICE detention centers in the country. Those calls also went largely unheeded. Then, in the fall of 2020, a group of women locked up by ICE at ICDC, bravely stepped forward—joined by a whistleblower-nurse who worked at ICDC—to file a public complaint with the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General addressing the ICE and LaSalle’s grievous medical neglect and denial of basic hygienic protections in the face of the then deadly COVID pandemic, and retaliatory use of disciplinary procedures—including solitary confinement—taken against anyone who spoke up. The complaint also contained documented allegations of non-consensual, invasive gynecological procedures carried out by a doctor contracted by the detention center. Those documented allegations of medical abuse are what ultimately garnered national and international media attention, followed by Senate scrutiny, as well as attention from the international human rights community. The women at ICDC finally experienced a moment of validation: their fundamental human rights that had been so grievously violated were getting the recognition they had long been calling for.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations conducted an investigation culminating in a report and hearing that highlighted the failures of officials from LaSalle Corrections, as well as ICE, in the provision of medical care to women held in their custody—failures that directly resulted in women being subjected to non-consensual, contraindicated, and invasive gynecological procedures. The international human rights community issued communications expressing their grave concerns surrounding the documented allegations, noting the host of rights violations under international law. In the summer of 2021, at a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights “IACHR”), the women subjected to abuse at ICDC finally got their day of rights recognition. During that webcast hearing, members of the IACHR, representatives for the United States, and the public, heard the powerful and courageous testimony of Wendy Dowe, one of the women harmed by the documented medical neglect and abuse at ICDC. Members of the IACHR expressly recognized the experiences to which Ms. Dowe testified as torture, and noted the obligation of a state under whose authority torture is carried out to provide reparations. For its part, the U.S. Government, represented by the DHS Officer of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, publicly apologized to Ms. Dowe for the abuses she endured. The DHS Officer also took personal responsibility for following-up on the investigation and ensuring measures were in place so that the abuses Ms. Dowe and those detained alongside her suffered were not repeated.

The IACHR’s public hearing—together with the Communications from different United Nations human rights mechanisms—marked an important moment of rights recognition and an important moment of collaboration among the often-siloed rights-communities. But the women behind the ICDC complaint, and the thousands of other immigrants subjected to rights abuses at ICDC and Stewart, and in immigration detention sites across the country, have yet to receive redress or reparations for the right violations they suffered, and in the absence of accountability, rights violations persist. This Article tells the story of efforts to achieve rights recognition, accountability, and redress for individuals subjected to ICE detention, focusing on advocacy specific to rights abuses at ICDC and Stewart while placing that story in the national context of abusive systems of immigration detention across the United States. It shines a light on the opportunities for advancing rights recognition before the international human rights community, particularly the IACHR, the headquarters for which are housed in this country’s capital, Washington, D.C. In noting the shortcomings and frustrations that come with international human rights advocacy, the Article makes the argument for continued engagement with international human rights mechanisms, and the norms they have established to protect and promote, and provides recommendations for moving from rights recognition to accountability, redress, and, ultimately, non-repetition.

This Article contends that the airborne strikes against al-Shabaab are both an unlawful tactic and a tool of U.S. military imperialism. Using legal analysis, an empirical study of open-source data of strike incidents, and historical material, I show how the strikes are unlawful and ineffectual in practice as well as in theory. I argue that the duration of the program despite such legal and practical flaws suggests that the aim of these strikes is not necessarily “killing terrorists” but maintaining continued military presence in Somalia.

This Article proceeds as follows: First, by comparing U.S. government statements that claim the legality of airborne strikes against the actual governing international humanitarian law (IHL) and domestic law standards, I show that the United States does not view either legal framework as any sort of constraint on its actions in Somalia. Second, by conducting a strike-by-strike analysis of U.S. actions against al-Shabaab, I prove that these strikes are unlawful in practice and do not serve any of the United States’ purported reasons for being in Somalia. Third, I turn to the broader history of U.S. military actions in Somalia and the world. When the United States does not act within the bounds of international or domestic law, or even its own counterterrorism goals, I argue that a historic, anti-imperialist critique of the program, rather than a legal one, is more pertinent, especially as U.S. military strategies continue to evolve.