tion of broad principles of economic, social, and cultural life to our antagonists than that we should abandon the principles of civil liberty to these same people. This is a task for the long haul, and the odds on success may be no better than even. But it is hard to see how we could justify a generation hence having done less than try. So I hope the committee, after due deliberation, will arrive at the same view.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Mr. Hargrove's prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN LAWRENCE HARGROVE 1

My colleagues have dealt in some detail with the implementation systems of the four treaties, and I should like to talk about how the international implementation of these treaties bears on the question put to the Senate by the President: the question of advice and consent to ratification. For I believe that it is here, rather than on the point of the effect of these treaties within the United States, that the central policy issue posed by the President's submission arises. I say this because my own view-a view which I think supported by the weight of the last three days of testimony in these hearings-is that the United States can, if it wishes, ratify these treaties without cost to its domestic legal order, and with genuine if perhaps modest benefit. In all probability, moreover, we can do so without branding ourselves, through a superabundance of reservations, as niggardly or timorous or perhaps even disingenuous in our embrace of the treaties' international obligations.

On this latter point, it is agreed on all sides that some reservations would be necessary, certainly in those cases where one of the treaties strikes a balance between contending interests-e.g. the interest in free speech, and the interest in racial non-discrimination—which is offensive to our own constitutional principles. The record is now amply supplied with questions about the need for additional reservations or other conditions upon our adherence, and each of these should be examined in due course with the care and objectivity that befits a decision on any great national commitment. In the process, we should remember that in entering a reservation the United States is availing itself of an integral part of the international law of treaties and by the mere act of reserving does not in any sense set itself against the other parties. But we should equally remember that the making of new national law for the United States through the conclusion of a treaty is an integral part of our constitutional system, and that proposals for creating new law in this way, like proposals for legislation by the Congress, should be evaluated on their substantive merits. I very much hope that discussion of these domestic issues, important as they are, will not obscure our clear perception of the central policy issue before us.

I would state that issue as follows: whether we as a national society are willing to bet that broadly multilateral legal standards respecting the humane conduct of governments toward their own citizens, standards essentially reflective of our own values, can survive in the sort of world in which we are required to live for the next generation or two: not only survive, but ultimately flourish, permanently affixed as a feature of the international system and increasingly influencing the conduct of governments and the evolution of national societies.

Mr. Chairman, the evidence on this proposition is, to say the least, mixed. The world confronting us is one which appears to be increasingly fragmented, multipolar, and disordered. It seems to be more frequently harangued by national demands to be one's own judge in all things, with results-as we can see even today-ranging from the disturbing to the hideous. A fair estimate is that a numerical majority of those wielding effective governmental power in our world at any given time are not merely indifferent but are in fact calculatedly hostile to many of the values embodied in these four treaties-certainly to those having to do with political freedoms-notwithstanding their formal adherence in many cases to the treaties themselves. Let's face it: judged by the standards of human value embodied in our own national system, whatever its flaws, the global community of governments has a disturbingly large population of villains and scoundrels, not to mention the occasional nut or murderous fanatic.

1 Director of Studies, American Society of International Law, and Lecturer, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Formerly Assistant Attorney General of Texas, and Senior Adviser for International Law, U.S. Mission to the United Nations. Views are the speaker's own.

Indeed in such a world the mere existence of these treaties, so broadly subscribed to, is a somewhat remarkable fact. So far from nit-picking these, or other, more recent human rights instruments such as the Helsinki Final Act, because they do not perfectly mirror the values of Western liberal democracy, we should marvel that they approach as closely to that ideal as they do. That they do is explained principally by the fact that, having been negotiated over a period of many years, beginning in the case of the two U.Ñ. Convenants in the late forties, they are largely the product of the period of unprecedented political influence enjoyed by the United States in the quarter-century following World War II. This is true despite the fact that we shortsightedly absented ourselves from negotiation on the two Covenants during the fifties. It is true even of the Helsinki Final Act, since that document's most important human rights provisions-found in the opening section of "Principles" which incorporates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two U.N. Covenants-reflect agreements reached years earlier. This brings me to two points which I believe are the nub of the matter. First: If a system of standards such as those embodied in these treaties has a reasonable chance to survive and gather strength in the long term, that chance very probably depends directly on our own vigorous participation in the effort. Second, if we are so to commit ourselves, it is certain that for the foreseeable future we will not find a more promising opportunity than that presented by these treaties, imperfect as they may be. For certainly the three United Nations treaties-and I would think probably the American Convention as well-could not possibly be renegotiated today on terms as favorable as those now crystallized in the present texts. And, for all the reasons why this is so, if we allow these treaties to atrophy, and to recede irretrievably into the backwater of political irrelevance, the actual operating standards that will emerge from the practice of states, from UN General Assembly Resolutions or from whatever source—are likely to be increasingly regressive.

I hope I will not be regarded as chauvinistic in imputing a critical role to the United States in the future evolution of international human rights. It is true that we owe the existence of the American Convention, for example, to the initiative of Latin American democracies. In Europe, our Western European allies have, in a sense, done very well without us in this field. Not only have they established within Western Europe a regional system of international human rights law which is currently the world's most advanced, but they are able and energetic participants in the regimes established by the universal treaties, both as governments and in the participation of their private experts. They do not need instruction from us, and it is just conceivable that we might profit by instruction from them. But at the same time, in a world in which the very survival of conditions favorable to Western European democracy is still commonly thought to involve a critical role for the United States, it is too much to expect that the broadly multilateral United Nations treaties can develop the toughness and vigor required for real relevance in their East-West dimension or otherwise-without the sustained political commitment of the United States. The future of international human rights is tightly bound up with the geopolitical facts of global life.

We can profit a great deal in this connection by our experience thus far with the Helsinki Final Act, and in particular the 1977 Belgrade review conference, the whole point of which I believe has been widely misunderstood. On that occasion, in my opinion, Justice Goldberg, to his very great credit, correctly perceived that the principal aim ought to be to establish and secure a continuing forum in which scrutiny of the human rights conduct of the signatory states, on the basis of the standards already set out by the Final Act, would be legitimized. He saw this as a political job of institution-building, the sine qua non of which was a core of political solidarity in the West.

The Helsinki Final Act is of course importantly different from the treaties now before this Committee. It is not a treaty, it does not deal exclusively with human rights, it differs in the special political circumstances of its negotiation and in the makeup of its signatories. But it is an organic part of the larger system of international human rights standards whose future is significantly at stake in the decision that the Senate will have to make on the treaties. And the political challenge which the four treaties present is similar in important respects to that presented by the human rights aspects of the Final Act.

The treaties present us with four somewhat overlapping regimes of principles and rules, capable of being invoked directly by individual governments in public statements and diplomatic communication, and informally by private individuals and groups. Each treaty also includes formal international implementation mechanisms (two of which the President has not included in his proposal for ratification) involving variously the participation of governments, of private

officially designated experts, or aggrieved private individuals, or, in the American Convention, an independent international tribunal. As other witnesses have pointed out, the implementation mechanisms involving ostensibly private and uninstructed experts, internationally chosen, are likely to proceed within their own domain with a greater measure of objectivity than intergovernmental mechanisms. The same is true of third-party determination by international officials, as in the case of the Inter-American Court. Yet unless these mechanisms are grounded on a foundation of solid commitment by sympathetically disposed governments to the integrity of the treaty regimes, their practical significance will be permanently truncated and circumscribed.

Whatever the Senate's disposition of these treaties may turn out to be, we may be sure that our principal spiritual adversaries on matters of human rights, and preeminently the Soviet Government, will be watching with keen interest. For however much they may exhort us to ratify the UN treaties, there can be little doubt that in their secret hearts they devoutly hope we will not. This is not because they place any substantial value on the pleasure of tweaking our noses with debating points about our non-participation in the instruments whose contents we sanctimoniously invoke. Rather, it is because they would deeply fear the prospect that the treaty regimes to which they are party, despite their own best efforts at various levels to render them anodyne and irrelevant, would begin to gather real and sustained political force. I am sure they are much more comfortable with a situation in which the high levels of political energy invested by a Jimmy Carter or some future American President in ad hoc and bilateral human rights protests, may be dissipated by the attritions of time or changes in the White House, rather than conserved in the form of enhanced effectiveness on the part of some continuing human rights institution. They rightly fear being caught in a web of living law from which they cannot extricate themselves without large cost, but in which they cannot remain without occasionally yielding to pressure for change. So they hope we will stay out, and that Western Europe and well-disposed states in the Third World will find it increasingly inconvenient to cross a certain threshold reserve if not timidity.

My own view is that we as a people should have enough confidence in our own competence, our political acumen, our staying power, and above all the inherent attractive force of our own basic values, to commit ourselves fully to the task of the sound development of these four treaty regimes. This applies across the board. I see no more reason why we should abandon the interpretation and administration of broad principles of economic, social and cultural life to our antagonists that we should so abandon the basic principles of civil liberty. This is a task for the long haul, and the odds on success may be no better than even. But it is hard to see how we could justify, a generation hence, having done less than try. I hope that the Committee after due deliberation will be of that view. Senator ZORINSKY. Thank you, Dr. Hargrove.

Mr. Shestack, we would be pleased to hear from you next.

STATEMENT OF JEROME J. SHESTACK, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, NEW YORK, N.Y.

Mr. SHESTACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is a privilege to be here as president of the International League for Human Rights.

The League was founded, incidentally, by Roger Baldwin, who is in the audience. It was most gracious of Senator Javits to go down and greet Mr. Baldwin, who is soon approaching his 96th birthday. Senator JAVITS. If you would yield to me, sir, I want to say that Mr. Baldwin is one of the greatest of all Americans. We should all go down to greet him.

Mr. SHESTACK. We certainly agree with that, Senator Javits.

Mr. Chairman, just recently I returned from a conference at UNESCO which dealt with the subject of peace and human rights. There is a great deal of ferment about human rights in the world today and it is high on the international agenda. To a large measure it is high on the international agenda because the United States has

placed it there. The United States, with its emphasis on human rights as part of its foreign policy during the past few years, has made human rights a critical matter for discussion among governments around the world.

There is a great deal of ferment also with respect to institutionalizing human rights procedures. The Human Rights Commission has enlarged its scope in its recent session more than ever before and, hopefully, will continue to do so at the next session. The Human Rights Committee reports are making an impact at the United Nations and with the countries that are involved. UNESCO has adopted procedures for human rights complaints. Various subcommissions are working in this area.

The United States can take much credit for this ferment, but there is a flaw in our role. This flaw is a certain lack of credibility because the United States has not ratified the human rights covenants. It is rather anomalous that the United States has not done this.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit our paper for the record. In it, we have spelled out a little bit of the U.S. involvement in the history of the covenants and certain additional material dealing with the human rights committees. I think that might be useful for the record.

Senator ZORINSKY. Without objection, that will be included in our record.

Mr. SHESTACK. Thank you, Senator Zorinsky.

One of the anomalous aspects about nonratification by the United States is the critical role the United States played in the history of these covenants. Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the instrumental people in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States played a significant role in the drafting of the covenants and many of the provisions of the covenants were taken from the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. President Kennedy supported the covenants and, of course, President Carter has signed the covenants and supported them.

One might ask, in view of this history of deep U.S. involvement, why has the United States not signed these covenants. There was a period of time when certain Members of Congress felt that for the United States to sign covenants and allow various human rights treaties to become the law of the land, it would be a way of having civil rights laws become a part of the Federal system at a time when the Federal Government had not yet enacted civil rights laws.

This reason is no longer valid because civil rights laws have been enacted and have been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. Nevertheless, some vestigial opposition remains, although the reason for such opposition is no longer valid, if it ever was valid.

If you examine the covenants, as various people have testified at these hearings, these covenants represent the deepest commitments of the United States to the safeguards of civil rights and civil liberties found in our Constitution and particularly in our Bill of Rights. Therefore, it would seem only natural to have the United States ratify them.

But the issue of credibility in the fora of the world is a critical one. Although emphasized by other speakers, I wish to emphasize this again. When the United States participates in the various meetings of human rights bodies, agencies and organizations of the United

Nations and nongovernmental organizations, the question invariably is asked, why does the United States not ratify these treaties. Unfortunately there really is no satisfactory answer.

It also is important, as I think Professor Lillich and others have mentioned here, that the United States play a role in the development of the procedures under the Human Rights Committee and the interpretation of the various covenants in working out implementing procedures and interpretations. The United States is hampered, indeed restrained, from that role by nonratification.

The human rights movement, Mr. Chairman, has been termed as the true revolutionary movement of the 20th century. It is a drumbeat to which masses of the world can march and respond. The United States own national interests very much are tied up in the human rights movement, as are the United States interests in a system of world order and peace, of which human rights invariably must be a condition.

We, therefore, as an international human rights organization dedicated to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its implementation through the various human rights treaties, strongly urge the Senate of the United States to ratify these treaties to maintain a position of credibility and to enable the United States better to perform the critical role of champion and advocate of human rights which so well suits this country and is so important to human dignity and the well-being of the world.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Mr. Shestack's prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JEROME J. SHESTACK!

Mr. Chairman: It is a privilege to appear before this Committee and participate in the Senate's consideration of the four principal international human rights treaties. These hearings come at an important time both in the promotion of human rights in United States foreign policy and in multilateral institutions.

The past three years have witnessed renewed United States commitment to the promotion of international human rights by the Carter Administration. Consistent with this policy, Congress and the Administration should now give careful attention to the United States role in institutionalizing human rights progress. The treaties being considered in these hearings allow the United States to participate in the development of international procedures designed to provide a systematic response to human rights violations worldwide.

The international human rights procedures being developed at the United Nations and Organization of American States, provide new arenas for bilateral and multilateral negotiation. United States ratification of these treaties would ensure our commitment to and participation in the development of these international human rights forums.

As President of the International League for Human Rights, I represent an organization with a long-standing commitment to the codification and implementation of an international human rights consensus. The League, which was founded by Roger Baldwin who is also testifying before this Committee, serves as an umbrella organization to over 40 affiliated groups in 30 nations throughout the world. The effectiveness of our activities through these national affiliate organizations, depends in large measure on the development of an international body of human rights laws, which establishes minimum standards for the conduct of government towards its citizens. Because the League views the United States role as an advocate of human rights to be of critical importance in advancing the cause of human rights, we view United States ratification of these treaties as an action of utmost priority.

1 Assisting in the preparation of this testimony were Michael H. Posner, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights, and Maureen Berman, Executive Director. International League for Human Rights, and Deborah Korzenick, Research Associate, International League for Human Rights.