Dear President Barack Obama – Congratulations on your inauguration. The hopes of billions of people are vested in your presidency. You have a historic opportunity to give new expression to the United States’ founding ideals of liberty, justice and equality by protecting and promoting human rights.
There are many new policies you can initiate, at relatively little cost, which will greatly extend the realm of justice and freedom and rebuild the moral stature of the US. You should propose a new United Nations international human rights convention, enforceable worldwide. Your country needs to recognise and support the International Criminal Court, to bring to justice the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The US State Department should compile a global index of human rights, measuring the record and ranking of every country on key human rights issues. Abuses of these rights should be raised in the UN and with offending states. US foreign aid should be made conditional on countries achieving significant progress towards upholding human rights.
You can show the way by ending the US use of detention without trial, torture and extraordinary rendition, and by closing down Guantanamo Bay. And the US can stop propping up corrupt, pro-Western human rights abusers. Rather, America should use the network and resources of the US Agency for International Development to support human rights organisations.
You should press for the worldwide decriminalisation of same-sex acts, seek the universal abolition of capital punishment and give a lead by ending the death penalty in the US. You should withdraw diplomatic, economic and military support from tyrannical regimes that persistently deny freedom to their own people and oppress their own citizens, on grounds such as gender, race, nationality, religion or belief, language, sexual orientation and transgender identity.
The US must pull out from Iraq and renounce the policy of selective and unilateral military intervention to overthrow foreign dictatorships, in favour of a policy supporting democratic and humanitarian civil society organisations within those countries, in order to empower the victims of oppression to liberate themselves. The Middle East must be a priority to secure a permanent negotiated settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict, including Israel’s withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders and the creation of a viable and democratic Palestinian state.
We need a new, more just international economic framework, where the common good, environmental protection and global equity take priority over private privilege, corporate greed and national self-interest. A fairer, sustainable, rand accountable international economic system is our best hope to safeguard jobs, homes, savings, public services, welfare provision, the environment and to tackle inequality.
You must take action to save the lives of the 1.5 billion people who are malnourished and without safe, clean drinking water. The US should lobby for a UN convention against war and poverty, whereby the nations of the world agree to cut their annual military expenditure by 10 per cent and divert the $100,000 million saved into a “Marshall Plan Two” for the eradication of hunger, malnutrition, dirty drinking water, poor sanitation and preventable illnesses by 2025.
And you must act now to halt the single greatest threat to the future of humanity: climate chaos. It is more of a danger than terrorism and war. Democracy and human rights mean nothing if we don’t have a planet where we can enjoy these freedoms. Preserving our fragile biosphere is the precondition for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for every human being
The hopes of humanity are in your hands. May you rise to greatness as a progressive and unifying leader who shapes a freer and fairer future –for the American people and for the people of the whole world.
Yours with best wishes for a more peaceful, just and green planet,
Peter Tatchell – human rights campaigner. For more information about Peter Tatchell’s human rights campaigns, please visit www.petertatchell.net
