Human rights at home
MASSACHUSETTS has long recognized the leadership role that states can play in promoting human rights. In the 1990s, Massachusetts was the first state to take the human rights violations in Burma seriously enough to impose financial sanctions. Indeed, it was this state's bold action that prodded the Clinton administration to take steps to isolate the lawless Burmese government.
Now, with the backing of Governor Deval Patrick, the Legislature is considering whether to withdraw the state's pension funds from investments in Sudan in an effort to step up pressure to end human rights abuses in Darfur. If the plan goes forward, Massachusetts would be one of a growing minority of states that have taken this step.
But while Massachusetts has been a leader in using its influence to promote human rights abroad, it's important to remember that human rights begin at home.
Of course, the issues here are different. Thankfully, we're not confronting genocide in our state. But human rights standards are also relevant to the day-to-day policy issues facing the Commonwealth, from healthcare to prisons to school discipline.
Many states and localities have already recognized the role that human rights concepts can play in guiding local policy. For example, San Francisco adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women as its municipal law in 1998. Using the convention's human rights standards, the city successfully took affirmative steps to address discrimination and disparate treatment facing women in their interactions with city government.
In Minnesota, the state's Department of Human Rights has launched a human rights education project -- aptly titled "This is My Home" -- piloting a state-focused human rights curricula in the Minnesota schools. In Los Angeles, the Board of Education has expressed an interest in incorporating human rights principles into school discipline protocols, securing "human dignity" for students in the public schools.
New York State has adopted human rights standards from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as part of its own law on the treatment of prisoners. Montana's state constitution follows the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in expressly providing for the protection of the "human dignity" of its citizens.
By incorporating human rights standards, these states and localities have adopted an approach to good governance that goes beyond feel-good platitudes. Sure, Massachusetts is no Burma, but really living up to human rights standards is not easy. Rather, as the UN High Commission for Human Rights has noted, human rights-based policies demand transparency in government decision making, accountability, and inclusion -- all of which are good for government and good for constituents, but all of which require hard work.
There are many areas of legislation where Massachusetts could incorporate such standards. Bills that would benefit from incorporation of human rights standards include legislation addressing state aid for K-12 education, the treatment of prisoners in state-run prisons, and strategies to further strengthen last year's healthcare reform package. But rather than proceed piece by piece, a better approach might be to create a Massachusetts Human Rights Commission that would work on a more global level to promote systematic state government attention to these issues at home.
In fact, it is only by bringing human rights home that we can be effective in efforts to enforce human rights in Burma, in Darfur, and elsewhere. In an era when the federal government is redefining torture and rewriting the rules of due process, there is an especially important role for states to play in giving real, everyday meaning to human rights here within the United States, and in shoring up our nation's human rights reputation.
Eleanor Roosevelt, a pivotal figure in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said it best:
"In small places, close to home . . . Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."
Martha Davis is a professor of law at Northeastern University's School of Law and co-director of the school's Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy. 
