Hearing of the Subcommittee on International Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Human Rights of the House Committee on International Relations

HEARING OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM, NONPROLIFERATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

SUBJECT: UNITED STATES SUPPORT OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY

July 7, 2004 Wednesday

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE ELTON GALLEGLY (R-CA)

WITNESSES PANEL I:

LORNE W. CRANER, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOR, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE;

ROGER P. WINTER, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT AND HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE, UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT;

PANEL II:

CARL GERSHMAN, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY; TOM MALINOWSKI, WASHINGTON ADVOCACY DIRECTOR, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH;

RICHARD WILLIAMSON, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE AND U.S. REPRESENTATIVE TO THE UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS;

KENNETH WOLLACK, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTE

LOCATION: 2172 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

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REP. BETTY McCOLLUM (D-MN): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your service, Mr. Craner, it's been a pleasure to work with you. I have three topics which I would like to lay out, and then if we don't have time for responses on all of them, a written response back to the chair and the members would be fine.

The first one deals with gender-based violence. Now, looking over the report, quite often the report, whether in any part of the world where we are watching countries closely for democracy development and human rights improvement, the report talks about gender-based violence quite often. And I know that the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Immigration, with the assistance of Congress, I believe that we should be doing a lot more to help women in these situations. In fact, there's appropriations requests that are in, and I'd like to know if the administration's going to look favorably upon that, because it is mentioned time and time and time again how women and girls are subject to violence.

Another issue that's in the report, it's (woe-bent ?) without it, is HIV AIDS. And I use Africa as an example. The AIDS epidemic in African countries continue to be a human rights tragedy that has ravaged Africa, along with much of the world and it's showing no signs of weakening, only spreading.

In fact just yesterday a UN documentation reported 4.8 million new infections, the highest incidence of AIDS continuing to be found of course in the sub-Saharan African area. Many of the people living with AIDS are women and children, and those living with AIDS are unable to do most anything else to improve their lives or even address the needs of their families, let alone their communities.

So the question that I have is, I would like more information in greater detail how the State Department, through the president's initiative and other programs is going to address the very serious human rights issues in Africa. Especially while civil societies deteriorate as the AIDS epidemic continues to ravage the continent. What does it do to put emerging democracies, even in a more fragile state, and what does it do for those established democracies, and none of them are very old, that continue to deal with these problems?

So how can we strengthen the capacity of countries in Africa to address human rights? The last comment I have I did not find in the report, and it has to do with unexploded ordinance. Now, one of the lasting legacies, unfortunately, of the Vietnam war era is the tremendous number of unexploded bombs and other ordinances that were dropped by our country over the country of Laos.

From 1964 till 1973 the U.S. flew 580,000 bombing runs over Laos. One over every nine minutes for 10 years. According to reports, more than 2 million tons of ordinance was dropped on the country, double the amount that was dropped in the European theater during the entire conflict of World War II. During this time period, when we were dropping in Laos, Laos had a population of over 3 million people. So doing math roughly, this means that there was a little under 1 ton of ordinance dropped for every person in the country of Laos.

Now to my point. According to CRS, 10 to 30 percent of these bombs did not explode, leaving an estimated eight to 24 million unexploded ordinance. So there's the cluster bombs that were part of these sub-munitions of these bombs-their "bombies" as they're called quite often. In my opinion, it's a human rights tragedy. Farmers find the unexploded ordinances in their field, hampering their use of developing agriculture.

Children continue to find the colorful bombies around their homes, mistaking them for toys and detonating them by accident. And even recently on the Discovery Channel they documented the amount of unexploded ordinance in Laos and showed local villagers using the unexploded ordinance to help build their homes or use them in schools. And these are still live bombs.

This year I have made a request to the appropriations committee to increase our commitment to cleaning up these unexploded ordinances, and to remove this portion of our lasting legacy. Can you tell me what role we see unexploded ordinance playing in human rights challenges in Laos as well as other countries? We've watched-there was an article in my local paper just about what our U.S. soldiers were doing to remove minefields in Afghanistan.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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REP. McCOLLUM: Mr. Chair, for the record can I enter the report that I mentioned from the Washington Post, record numbers infected with HIV AIDS, which also not only talks about HIV AIDS but gender- based violence?

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