How Do Human Rights Compare Internationally to the United States?


According to a landmark paper published in 2014, titled Respect for Human Rights has Improved Over Time: Modeling the Changing Standard of Accountability, it was found that the way we measure human rights has changed overtime. The standards for human rights protection have gotten higher over the last 65 years that this study was analyzing (1949-2014). In response to this, the author created the “dynamic standard model” which uses different statistical techniques to adjust the “bias in measurements so that human right protection measurements can be compared over time” (Fariss; Roser). Below is an adaptation of the data he collected for the year 2014, where zero is the mean internationally over time, and any number below or above zero accounts for a standard deviation in the respective direction (Roser):
Notice that the United States is in fact below average (below 0). This is more evident by plotting a graph comparing different countries using the data from the study mentioned above:
Interestingly enough, the world average over time is above the world average in 2014, while the United States is below it. This is solely a measurement of how well the United States government maintains first generation rights, which is defined by our Global Politics textbook as “civil and political rights, such as the right to life, freedom of thought and religion, and freedom from arbitrary arrest. They are mostly negative rights” (Murphy). It would make the most sense that points were docked on the U.S. when it comes to detention, torture (for investigating terrorism), and maybe even extrajudicial executions in the form of  drone strikes. I say this because the U.S.’s score seriously dipped on the graph above after 2001.

Beyond how the U.S. protects first generation rights, it still remains in the top quartile for economic freedom, and is state which values freedom of the press (more rare than you might think) (Roser):

Work Cited
Fariss, Christopher J. “Respect for Human Rights Has Improved Over Time: Modeling the
Changing Standard of Accountability.” American Political Science Review, vol. 108, no.
02, 2014, pp. 297–318, doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055414000070.Accessed 25
February 2018.   
Murphy, Robert, and Charles Gleek. Pearson Baccalaureate Essentials: Global Politics. Edited
by Christian Bryan and Sarah Lustig, Pearson Education Limited, 2016. Accessed 25
Feb. 2019.
Roser, Max. “Human Rights.” Our World in Data, Oxford Martin Programme on Global
Development, 12 June 2016, ourworldindata.org/human-rights. Accessed 25 February
2018.   
 

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