The Philadelphia Citizen: “The chair in the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (UNHRC) reserved for the United States sat empty and loud, but we’d come to speak. As a member of a contingent of civil society organizations, I traveled to Geneva, Switzerland last month to participate in the UNHRC’s Universal Periodic Review.

The empty chair symbolized an abdication of leadership in the Trump administration’s refusal to participate in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Unsurprisingly, the administration abandoned its obligations to human rights protections domestically and internationally, in yet another sign of a descent into authoritarianism.

Because the U.S. didn’t show up, we showed up instead to forge alliances with international advocates and partners and to assure that the human rights violations occurring throughout the U.S. were well documented and heard.

Today, on International Human Rights Day, I think about how the seeds for my presence at the UNHRC were planted in the 80s as I was growing up in Philadelphia. From my mother I learned the importance of international solidarity in a home that was fiercely against the South African apartheid regime, where a portrait of Nelson Mandela hung on the wall and his plight was discussed at the dinner table. I watched and listened to my parents and other activists who took the anti-Apartheid struggle from the shantytowns of Soweto to international capitals of the world, and was dragged along to demonstrations against the Apartheid regime, as my mother’s generation built alliances and strategies that eventually resulted in the collapse of Apartheid in South Africa.”

Read the full article.