Source: Florida Action Committee on change.org
To: The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Office of the United Nations, Complaint Procedure Unit, CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Petition to Declare Public Sex Offender Registration in the United States a Violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
The Florida Action Committee, Inc. (FAC) is a 2,500+ member non-profit public safety organization that advocates for the rights of all persons. Included in our membership are people forced to register as sexual offenders in the United States.
Today, approximately one-million people in the United States are forced to register as “sex offenders”. It is a debilitating label that elicits a very negative social reaction and causes extreme harm to the person wearing the label and anyone associated with them.
In Florida, all persons forced to register are required to do so for life, and all are broadcast on a State sanctioned, publicly accessible and Google indexed website along with their name, picture, address, and other identifying information. They remain on the public registry even if they move out of the state, move out of the country, or die. Two-thirds of the people on Florida’s sex offender registry do not even live in Florida communities!
The publicly broadcast label leads to stigmatization, separation from society, loss of employment, loss of housing and even exposure to violence at the hands of vigilantes. The stigmatization extends to the spouses, children, family, friends, employer and anyone that associates with the registrant. The isolation, shame, stress, fear of violence, loss of income and other psychological effects are experienced by the entire household.
Read the full petition and sign it
While nice, I think it would have been better to argue putting past crimes on a passport is compelled speech since it isn’t done with anyone else.
Didn’t Trump just pull out of the UN?
Trump withdraws U.S. from United Nations Human Rights Council : NPR
Seems all well and good but it also seems like a waste of time. It says it’s been up for 2 years and just now has 7000 signatures. To get noticed it needs to be 70000 but even though there is close to a million people on this hit list we can’t all join together and have a real voice. It shouldn’t be that hard to get a couple hundred thousand signatures by how many people are affected by this hit list
A “Violation” of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is, meaningless. The Declaration is not enforceable, it is simply a statement of opinion on what Rights Humans should have.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is, however, enforceable International Law. The United States is s signatory, and is bound to it by agreement. Also meaningless.
In theory, our Federal Court system has authority to interpret and deliver rulings on issues of International Law, but American Law almost always prevails. If it’s all legal under American Constitutional Law, our courts rarely ever let International Law prevail particularly on issues of Domestic Law. On issues that involve other Nations, perhaps, but not on issues of domestic law and policy.
The irony of course being the Declaration and this convention that sprang from it, were direct responses to Nazi policies that were “All legal under Reich Law”. The Declaration and this Convention recognized that certain standards had to be Universal regardless of what any Nation’s domestic legal system may allow for.
The Pogrom’s violation of basic human rights were the kind of policy that the Declaration attempted to condemn, and this Convention attempted to outlaw.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
Article 17
Section 1
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation.”
The Pogrom doesn’t do all of that? Of course not, there’s nothing “Arbitrary” about it! Simply deciding that a quote printed in a popular magazine from a man who has a financial incentive to paint certain people in a certain light made while not under oath and free to lie as much he wants, should be given credit equal to a Divine Proclamation of Universal and Eternal Unquestionably Perfect Truth! So obviously there is absolutely nothing arbitrary about that Unquestionable Presumption.
Exactly the kind of legal contrivances these things were intended to stop.
Counter Point: If the Pogrom LIES were true, and Nation was constantly crawling with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Relentless Sexual Predators, how has the State not violated this very same article with regards to the Children and parents of the Nation?
The children are not being arbitrarily targeted for Unlawful interference with privacy, and family by being left to be “victimized by the legions of Predators” the State Pogrom LIES insist are everywhere? The State is not making these “unlawful stacks”, but they violate this law by doing nothing to prevent them from occurring?
Also, are the Children of our Nation not experiencing “Unlawful attacks on Reputation and Character” by the State’s suggestion that the child victims will keep the “Predation” the State LIES insist they experienced, a secret?
Does the State not impune the character of all “unreported child victims” by suggesting they would all choose to endanger other children with the threat of the same kind of predation the State LIES presume they experienced, a secret? The State insists that all the unreported child victims, that they presume exist, will all choose their own privacy over the welfare of the other children and communities? Sounds pretty bad to me. Then there are the .. utterly clueless parents that failed to protect, then noticed nothing? Sounds like the State insists that all the parents of our Nation should be presumed to be incompetent and clueless… or so heartless they will keep what happened a secret for their own selfish reasons.
I signed this a long while ago along with other petitions and it seems a waste of time. No one cares about our rights and no shouting from mountain tops is going to change that. The only thing that will cause a change is for the right case to come before the Supreme Court that is challenged by a great attorney that uses true facts and can debunk the false myths from the previous case before the court.
I have signed this petition at least twice over the past few years as well. And the number signed never seems to move much, always around 7,000 after all these years. How can that be? Are there several of the same petition going around?
I am not questioning how the number can be so low when we have a couple million impacted people (PFRs and loved ones) – we all know people are very action averse – I am saying after all these go-arounds, shouldn’t it have gone up at least a couple thousand if every day it lists new people signing?
I don’t know how meaningful this is if it can’t be enforced by the United Nations. To be honest the United States seems to whatever it wants without repercussion.
Something seems odd about this petition but not sure what