Statement to the 2002 OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting,

Working Session on Democratic Institutions,

by Democracy First

September 2002

Warsaw, Poland

 

Regarding the Matter of the Continuing Denial of

Universal and Equal Suffrage

to the People of Washington, DC

 

Mr. Chairman, my name is Timothy Cooper, and I have the honor to speak on behalf of Democracy First, and the nearly 600,000 residents of the capital city of the United States of America, who, for two hundred years, have been denied the most basic of citizenship rights—the right to participate in the national legislature of their own country through duly elected representatives.

 

While this disquieting fact about the undemocratic nature of America’s capital is little known throughout the world, that reality does not detract from the injustice that it represents for generation after generation of Washingtonians, who bear all of the responsibilities of citizenship, yet are denied the right to drink from democracy’s well.

 

Despite two hundred years of protest, notwithstanding centuries of lobbying and lawsuits, things have not changed. And there is no relief in sight. Yet slowly, inexorably during the past decade the curious issue of the disenfranchisement of these United States citizens has found its way before international human rights fora, including the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, DC, the UN Human Rights Committee in New York, the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

 

Now, at last, it has come before this Working session of the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

 

It could not have come at a better time for the people of Washington, DC, who are taxed on a basis equal to all other Americans and who have given their lives in the service of their country.

 

That is why it is of particular note that the government of the United States stands silent in the face of this injustice. It will not be moved, even though the right to vote is a fundamental human right; even though the United States has signed without reservation international treaty after international treaty that guarantees this right;  even though this right is enshrined in OSCE human dimension commitments.

 

Without the right to be represented in the national legislature of our own country, the over one half million people living in the United States capital experience a deep political discrimination that never ends and it has had the effect of creating a form of political apartheid that not only undermines the dignity of the city’s inhabitants but corrodes the democratic character of the country.

 

For two hundred years this injustice has been permitted to stand.  It is time for things to change, and we would hope that the OSCE would become an agent for that change.

 

Mr. Chairman, it is said that the OSCE is a community of values and that it is unique as an international body because its fifty-five member States have agreed by consensus that pluralist democracy, predicated on the rule of law, is the “only system of government suitable to guarantee human rights effectively.”

 

But, regrettably, the United States of America-- an OSCE member and duly obligated to fulfill its OSCE human dimension commitments-- shows  no interest in rectifying this wrong. It stands aloof as though it was of little consequence that at the political heart of the country, the founding principles of the nation—democratic rights—are nonexistent.

 

Mr. Chairman, the people of Washington, DC are invisible . Because they cannot speak in the United States Senate-- because they cannot speak in the House of Representatives—because they cannot vote—the single most important event in a democratic society--  it is as though they do not even exist on the political landscape, and nowhere is this more evident than in the history of the nation’s legislation.

 

There has not been one single law that was ever passed by the United States Congress in all of two hundred years that the residents of Washington, DC ever took part in. Imagine, the entire legislative history of the nation was created without their consent.

 

The will of the people has never been heard.  Not once in two hundred years.

 

Mr. Chairman, the people of America’s capital city are second-class persons. In America, the only other of people of legal age who cannot vote are convicted felons. And what is perhaps most curious of all, the disenfranchisement of Washingtonians is sanctioned by the nation’s constitution, which permits the denial of core democratic rights.  In the same way that African American slaves were once classified as 3/5^th persons under the constitution, the residents of Washington are codified as sub-citizens.

 

Before the US constitution was amended in 1920—as astonishing as it now seems—women, too, were denied the right to vote. From slavery to freedom, from the denial of suffrage to the right to vote for women, the US Constitution has evolved. Now it is time for it to change again—to make democracy in America whole.

 

That is why I have come to the OSCE today—to seek your assistance in removing the stain of this anti-democratic disenfranchisement from the fabric of America’s democratic tradition.

 

The United States of America must honor its OSCE human dimension commitments, otherwise it discredits not only itself but also the enterprise of this august institution.

 

The grounds for OSCE intervention are clear.

 

Permit me to briefly outline the case against the United States of America.

Under the1990 Copenhagen Document, which defines the human dimension commitments of the participating OSCE States, and which were affirmed by consensus at the highest levels of government, the participating States “declare that the will of the people, freely and fairly expressed through periodic and genuine elections, is the basis of the authority and legitimacy of all government” and that they will “accordingly respect the right of their citizens to take part in the governing of their country, either directly or thought representatives freely chosen by them through fair electoral processes….”

 

Moreover, they declare that the will of the people serves as the only legitimate basis for the authority of government, and that therefore they will guarantee “universal and equal suffrage to adult citizens.”

 

These fundamental human dimensions cannot be limited or restricted in an arbitrary or capricious manner. Any limitations must be “strictly proportionate” to the objective of the law, which necessitates a narrow interpretation, especially in light of the fact that any limitation must be weighed “against the great value of such fundamental freedoms to a free and open democratic society.”

 

Mr. Chairman, the right to participate in the national legislature of one’s country through duly elected representatives is not only an OSCE human dimension commitment but also a human right under international law under the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man of the Organization of American States. (See Appendices)

 

Indeed, Mr. Chairman, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on October 19, 2001 issued a confidential report with recommendations to the United States in a case brought before the Commission in 1993 by residents of Washington, DC.

 

That soon-to-be released report, which will confirm the Commission’s findings that human rights violations are, in fact, taking place in America’s capital, cannot be ignored—must not be ignored-- any more than the OSCE human dimension commitments made by the United States must not be ignored by this body.

Mr. Chairman, the “universality principle” applies. The United States chose to accept these human dimension commitments yet it ignores their application in this case. It is therefore time for the OSCE to step in to facilitate remedy to right this wrong.  Human dimension commitments “are matters of direct and legitimate concern to all participating States.”

 

We believe that the OSCE has a solemn duty to assist in this instance because it is a community of responsibility.

 

Mr. Chairman, the OSCE has at its disposal two mechanisms that could be employed to assist in the resolution of this human dimension problem: the Vienna and Moscow Mechanisms. We urge the OSCE to put one of them to use at the earliest possible opportunity.

 

The democratic rights, which the citizens of Washington, DC have been denied for two hundred years are acknowledged by this body to be birthrights, rights which this body was formed to promote and protect. Mr. Chairman, and participating nations, we ask you to invoke your mechanisms and ask questions of the United States about its violation of its human dimension commitments in the case of the continuing denial of equal political rights to the citizens of its own nation’s capital.

 

 

Thank you.