The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case that concerns whether overcrowding in California prisons, which has led to grossly unsanitary conditions and inadequate access to medical and mental health care, warrants a court ordered reduction of nearly 40,000 prisoners within two years.

A Pentagon study to assess the impact of repealing the military’s ban on openly gay servicemembers found that repeal would pose little risk to military effectiveness.

Congress returns to work next Monday for the lame-duck session, the last work period of the 111th Congress before the new Congress is sworn in next year. 

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has identified the following six goals as the civil and human rights community's highest priorities for the lame duck session:

This article was written by Don Kraus, chief executive officer of Citizens for Global Solutions, and is cross-posted from Global Solutions Blog. Citizens for Global Solutions is a membership organization that envisions a world where nations work together to abolish war, protect our rights and freedoms, and solve the problems facing humanity that no nation can solve alone. It works to build political will in the United States to achieve this vision.

Today we recognize the 65th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations.  The world has changed dramatically since October 24th, 1945 when 51 nations banded together "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war."  Those intervening 65 years were perhaps the most consequential in the entire history of humanity and the U.N. has played a vital role.

In 1945 the world's population was about 2.5 billion.  Europe was in disarray. Ethiopia, Egypt, and Liberia were the only independent nations in Africa.  Today, there are close to 7 billion people in the world and 192 U.N. member nations. Revolutions in communications, agriculture, health-care, transportation and governance have fueled an increasingly interdependent world.  

When the U.N. was established, the word "genocide" had not even been invented. There were very few international laws and organizations.  Today the U.N. has negotiated over 510 multilateral treaties on human rights, terrorism, global crime, refugees, disarmament, trade, commodities, the oceans and many other matters. U.N. member states have built a global web of institutions, laws, and norms to manage everything from international flights to world economics and genocide prevention.

During a recent appearance in Washington, D.C., Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, discussed the Obama administration's approach to human rights and foreign policy, and he identified the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as a priority.