Experts Say Secretary of State is Wrong on UN Treaty

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | 2013

WASHINGTON DC, Nov 29 (C-FAM) In a hearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, two legal experts disputed the Obama administration’s main arguments for ratifying the Disabilities Treaty and said it may even undermine progress for disabled persons abroad.

Secretary of State John Kerry said, “Our ratification doesn’t require a single change to American law, and it won’t add a penny to our budget.” Jeremy Rabkin disagreed, saying, “Ratifying this convention would commit the United States to obligations we cannot now foresee.” Rabkin is a professor of law at George Mason University.

Three times during his testimony, Kerry emphasized that joining the treaty would lead to other countries to install such things as “curb cuts, ramps, bus lifts, accessible bathrooms, tactile strips, fire alarms with flashing lights and all of the other advancements” to make it easier for Americans who work, study, and travel abroad.

Rabkin raised the question of how such an agenda might make things worse for persons with disabilities abroad by shifting the focus away from badly needed basic needs. “Do we really want to insist that convenience for traveling Americans must take priority over basic human needs in developing countries,” Rabkin asked. “Money for this purpose may mean less money for schools in countries with limited literacy, less money for inoculation programs in countries still facing epidemic disease, less money for food programs in countries with mass malnutrition.”

One of Secretary Kerry’s main arguments was that American leadership on the issue would be “jeopardized” and that the US would “remain on the sidelines” by declining to ratify the convention. Curtis Bradley dismissed the threat, saying, “I have no doubt that the United States will continue to be a world leader on these issues regardless of whether it joins the Disabilities Convention.” Bradley is a professor of law at Duke University.

During the first hearing on November 5th, experts responded to questions about whether it would be possible to make statements at the time of ratification to make sure the US would be “inoculated” from having to make any changes to domestic law. At Thursday’s hearing, experts addressed the question about how such statements could be nullified.

Remarkably, no one at the hearing was sure. When the hearing’s co-chair Senator Corker asked the Secretary of State if such protective statements could be removed by presidential edict, the Secretary of State seemed befuddled. After a few attempts to formulate an answer, Kerry finally said he would have to find out.

Bradley argued that it is possible that the President could lift a reservation with the stroke of a pen. He proposed that the Senate include a reservation requiring a two-third vote of the Senate to lift them. It remained unclear whether such a reservation, too, might be removed by presidential directive. The Supreme Court ignored such a reservation altogether in its decision in Roper v. Simmons when it cited the very part of a UN treaty that the US had reserved upon.

Secretary Kerry said the Obama administration is “one hundred percent dedicated” to such statements in order to get the treaty passed in Congress. Senator Corker refuted this position, saying that, “The administration has shown thus far no willingness” to deal with such concerns.

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