The Washington Post

 

D.C. Voting Rights Effort Goes International

Activist Takes Case to U.N. Committee on Racial Discrimination in Geneva

By Sewell Chan

Washington Post Staff Writer

 

         A local activist left yesterday for Switzerland, traveling an unprecedented distance to press the case for voting representation in Congress and full self-government for District of Columbia residents before a United Nations panel.

 

         Timothy Cooper, a 38-year District resident, is scheduled to testify in Geneva on Friday before the 59^th session of the United Nations Committ3ee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.  He plans to argue that the lack of empowerment of District residents, two-thirds of whom are members of racial minorities, violates an international convention the United States ratified in 1994.

 

         'The government's denial of voting rights to District residents contradicts its international policy of promoting democracy and human rights around the globe," said Cooper, 48, who is paying for the trip.  The session began Monday and continues until Aug. 17.  

 

         Officials from the State and Justice departments, after presenting the first U.S. report on compliance with the treaty Friday, could be obliged to answer critical questions about the District’s political status from committee members Monday.  The 102-page report, completed in September, does not mention the issue.

 

         "Until the U.S. delegation receives questions from the committee, it's premature to comment," said a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations in Geneva.  "The report is in the public domain, and the next comment will be made in response to the committee's questions".

 

         The case of District residents' political rights has come before the United Nations once before, also spurred by Cooper, a democracy activist who recently has focused on human rights in China.  U.S. officials had to defend the limited voting representation of District residents during 1995 hearings at U.N. headquarters in New York on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States ratified in 1992.

 

         Meanwhile, advocates await a ruling on a 1993 action they filed against the United States before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, which is a part of the Organization of American States. 

  

         Cooper, long active in statehood and pro-democracy efforts, said he is one of several nongovernmental representatives who received a time slot from the U.N. secretariat’s office to comment on aspects of the U.S. report.

 

         "Clearly this is an hour of history when we can shine the international spotlight of human rights concerns on the plight of D.C. residents, and this opportunity will not come again for at least another five years, at least before this committee," he said.

 

         Legal scholars said the turn to international forums is increasingly popular for activists who have been stymied at home.

 

         "It's long been an extremely effective strategy for disenfranchised groups or oppressed groups in dictatorships of various kinds," said Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professor at Harvard Law School.  What is new, she said, is the use of such panels to embarrass or pressure advanced industrial democracies.

 

         "It's a strategy that's likely to seem quixotic or counterproductive in the short term but that over the long term could well produce changes in surprising ways," she said.

 

         Critical findings by international panels may not have immediate legal consequences but are still significant, said Ruth Wedgwood, a professor at Yale Law School.  "In practice, enforcement is really by persuasion," she said, adding that such efforts risk a backlash by those who perceive a threat to domestic sovereignty.

 

         Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, executive director of D.C. Vote, an advocacy group founded in 1998, applauded the effort.  "Foreign governments have no idea that residents of the District don't have voting rights, so Tim's effort is terrific," she said.

 

         The advocates need any help they can get.  Their effort has been frustrated at nearly every turn:  the 1978 constitutional amendment granting voting representation that failed, th4e 1993 House rejection of statehood, and October's Supreme Court ruling that D.C. residents do not have a constitutional right to voting members of Congress.  And although last year's Democratic platform endorsed statehood, the GOP platform argued that the District should continue its “unique status."

 

         Cooper argues that the city's unique political status is at odds with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which defines discrimination as any policy based on race that "has the purpose or effect' of denying fundamental freedoms, including the right to vote.

 

         During the 1995 hearings, U.S. representatives quoted from the Federalist Papers to argue that the District, the capital since 1800, was envisioned as an enclave "responsible to the federal government alone."  They also said that granting District residents full voting rights might give the city undue influence over federal officials.

 

         Cooper believes both arguments are anachronistic.  He said denial of voting rights is linked to the nation's history of racial discrimination, citing the repeal of the district's short-lived territorial government in 1874 and the domination of the House district Committee by Southern segregationists through the 1970s.  The District became majority-back in 1957 and achieved limited self-government in 1974.