Governments violate more human rights than ISIS.

Your Washington Times editorial “Human rights and wrongs” (June 2, 2016) missed the single greatest source of human rights violations and the United Nations persistent failure to end them.   It is world leaders worship of national sovereignty instead of human rights…and their insistence that the United Nations maintain its current system and structures - which can do nothing to effectively stop the suffering.  

Islamic extremists have accelerated human rights abuses but extreme violations have always existed.  And, they will continue to exist even without Islamic extremists  for one simple reason.   Most national governments, especially the US, thwart any effort to empower the UN to effectively stop or prosecute anyone who commits them.  Nation states, especially the US government, confine the UN to “lofty rhetoric” instead of allowing structures that can effectively prevent, prosecute and deter genocide, torture, slavery, and wars.  Wars that any nation can start at any time without being held accountable if they possess nuclear weapons.

The US Constitution and Bill of Rights usually puts the inalienable rights of our own citizens above state’s rights and even the rights of our federal government, but it persistently fails to hold this ideal standard for any nation beyond our shore. 

The humanitarian suffering sourced by ISIS pales in comparison to the suffering caused by this unbridled freedom of nation states.  It is increasingly self-evident that each nation’s so called sovereignty will do nothing to prevent the future suffering of its own citizens from war, terrorism, climate change, pandemics, cyber-attacks, WMD proliferation, or the mass migrations of refugees as these unchecked drivers of global chaos continue.   Thomas Jefferson once said, "A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse."   Trump wants to build a wall to protect us but we what we need to build is a system of global justice.