The U.S. Government and Corporations Are Totally Doing It

The United States has been in bed with corporations who allow human trafficking, child labor, and other serious human rights abuses for years now. But now it looks like someone just might catch them doing the horizontal polka. And that someone is the United Nations.

This year, for the first time ever, the U.S. will be the subject of an official United Nations human rights review. The process is known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), and every member country is subject to it at some point. Now that it's the U.S.'s turn, nongovernmental organizations and other civil society players have begun making complaints about U.S. human rights violations to the UN. And many of their complaints have centered around a lack of oversight of corporations who use child and slave labor.

When it comes to reigning in corporate activity that abuses worker, the U.S. is about as proactive as a slug being poked with a stick. Some examples of private companies that have been accused of serious human rights abuses include the trafficking of Nepali laborers by Kellogg Brown & Root; forced medical experimentation by Pfizer; torture by military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan; the use of slave labor to build U.S. military projects in Kuwait; and violations of the indigenous peoples' rights by private mining companies in Nevada. And that list is far from exhaustive.

Some think that criticizing the U.S.'s age-old romantic relationship with some of the world's biggest corporations is futile, and that the UN process will at best result in a national feeling of impotence. But others see the UPR as an opportunity to try and bring the U.S. in line with some basic human rights standards around the world. After all, the U.S. has been free with the judgment of other countries' human rights records. Are we so unwilling to admit that we need a little kick in the pants sometimes, too?

I know that the affair between the U.S. and corporations has been going on a long, long time and is part of the fabric of America. But there is precedent for getting the two out of bed long enough to talk about human rights. It happened in the early part of the 20th century, with the first federal laws prohibiting child labor. And it has happened since with improved conditions for workers and an increased culture of corporate social responsibility. It can happen again, when we tell the U.S. government it is their job to hold corporations accountable for abuses like human trafficking.

It is going to be difficult to get the U.S. government and corporations to stop doing it all together, perhaps even impossible. But at the very least we can make sure they're using protection. You know, for workers.

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