Professor
Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur for the UN, is from Australia. Not a
country that is poor. Nor is it one that is free from its own human rights
abuses. Just ask the Aboriginal peoples there. But, let’s look at what he has
to say about the US and its human rights violations and then what he has to say
about the human rights violations of some of the other countries that are on
the UN Human Rights Commission. One more thing about Professor Philip, he seems
to have though so poorly of the US and its institutions that he sought his
collegiate degrees at NYU.
Funny
how that works.
Professor
Philips states that extreme poverty is more than a lack of income. The World
Bank has defined extreme poverty at earning $1,25 a day. Prof Philips states that
extreme poverty is less money than that. It also includes not having access to
the human needs of cleanliness, dignity, and other basic human rights.
I
am not about to argue that.
In
2018, the Professor came out with a “scathing report” on the USA and how we, as
a country, were treating our poor. Here is a chart from that report that
summarized areas including health, education, and standard of living across the
USA’s cast geographic regions.
Alright, so that chart was actually from
2018, my mistake.
Oh! Oh, no. Oh, my goodness, I see what I
did. Pardon me, please. That is from a different report, also done by the UN.
That is the Human Development Report of 2018. This looks at human development
indicators. It highlights improvements as well as persistent deprivations and
disparities. I think that’s how it’s worded on the UN’s site, persistent
deprivations and disparities.
If you look at the Fragile States Index,
also done by the UN, you will see on that list Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eritrea,
Somalia, Togo, and Bangladesh. That is seven of the 18 countries currently on
the UN Human Rights Council. Somalia is a terrorist hotbed in addition to
currently chopping people apart at the public market.
For the record, the UN Failed State Index
lists 150 other countries before the USA. That 150 failing, fragile, falling
apart, and other states include all of the Middle East, Africa, the the Asian
Sub Continent, the Former Soviet Union, and South and Central America.
Can the UN actually put together a cogent
argument? Their own data show that the US has a way to go to lead the world
again. While we have homeless children and veterans, we are not an example of
goodness. While we have citizens going bankrupt over medical bills, we are not
the example of prosperity.
Still, we are not to be judged by third
world nations who still mutilate each other for a difference of opinion.
