10-11-2005, 06:16 AM
We understand there is a category for drugs. But there's also a category for human rights. This proposal addresses incarceration for victimless crimes. Victimless obviously requires definition. As there are already NSUN resolutions addressing sex workers, the other major area of victimless crimes are drug-related; therefore the specific mention of which crimes are forbidden from offering sentences of incarceration. (If it didn't specifically identify drug crimes, then the critique would be that it is too vague.)
The point wasn't to get hypertechnical about whether the mods would actually accept this as a human rights resolution (the lawyers of Lazy days have been restrained from making such a detailed account thus far). The point was to further the discussion about what constitutes a human rights resolution. Are you advocating for the UN to say that anything related to another category can't be considered a human rights issue? If that is the case, there is no way the labeling resolution can be considered a human rights issue. Did you fail to apply the same rigor to that resolution due to its genesis in the IDU, or are you saying that the prison system can't address human rights issues but that the words on a consumer product can?
Regardless, the Special Commission on Human Rights of Lazy days will always advocate that the right to be free is a central, fundamental human right.
Of course there are related issues: the equity of fines for rich and poor in a criminal justice system, access to defense counsel (for countries with due process), disenfranchisement (under political systems that allow voting), the use of public punishments, the use of corporal punishment, court mandated treatment programs, the imposition of the death penalty, and so on, but a resolution can only address so much. People's rights will be better secured after passage of the resolution; that's enough.
Unfortunately, the prison-industrial complex itself has convinced people drug punishments are somehow distinct activities from other human rights issues. Reducing incarceration won't address many of the practical consequences of the criminalization of drug use (organized crime, property theft, international terrorism and drug warlords, chemical impurities, loss of tax revenue, and so forth), but it will help address one of the clearest and most severe infringements of a core human right of any activity of any government in the world. What exactly, the people of Lazy days wonder, is a more pure defense of human rights? (We would argue vigorously that this is a much more pure defense of human rights than anything offered in defense of the right to know what is in the food people eat.)
The point wasn't to get hypertechnical about whether the mods would actually accept this as a human rights resolution (the lawyers of Lazy days have been restrained from making such a detailed account thus far). The point was to further the discussion about what constitutes a human rights resolution. Are you advocating for the UN to say that anything related to another category can't be considered a human rights issue? If that is the case, there is no way the labeling resolution can be considered a human rights issue. Did you fail to apply the same rigor to that resolution due to its genesis in the IDU, or are you saying that the prison system can't address human rights issues but that the words on a consumer product can?
Regardless, the Special Commission on Human Rights of Lazy days will always advocate that the right to be free is a central, fundamental human right.
Of course there are related issues: the equity of fines for rich and poor in a criminal justice system, access to defense counsel (for countries with due process), disenfranchisement (under political systems that allow voting), the use of public punishments, the use of corporal punishment, court mandated treatment programs, the imposition of the death penalty, and so on, but a resolution can only address so much. People's rights will be better secured after passage of the resolution; that's enough.
Unfortunately, the prison-industrial complex itself has convinced people drug punishments are somehow distinct activities from other human rights issues. Reducing incarceration won't address many of the practical consequences of the criminalization of drug use (organized crime, property theft, international terrorism and drug warlords, chemical impurities, loss of tax revenue, and so forth), but it will help address one of the clearest and most severe infringements of a core human right of any activity of any government in the world. What exactly, the people of Lazy days wonder, is a more pure defense of human rights? (We would argue vigorously that this is a much more pure defense of human rights than anything offered in defense of the right to know what is in the food people eat.)