Morris B. Abram, United States Representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, criticized the United States today for failing to ratify U.N. human rights conventions. He testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which met to hear the position of the American Bar Association, which opposes the pacts.
Mr. Abram, who is also president of the American Jewish Committee, said the United States, “the professed leader of the free world,” stands “with Bolivia, Spain, Togo, South Africa and Yemen as one of the tiny minority of members of the United Nations, which has not ratified any of its human rights conventions.”
He told the committee that “we should have been the first to ratify” the conventions on slavery, forced labor and the political rights of women, “rather than still be haggling about vague and fictitious dangers lurking in them.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.