> From: Arieh Lebowitz <ariehnyc@prodigy.net>
> Date: November 6, 2009 1:29:20 PM CST
> To: Arieh Lebowitz <ariehnyc@prodigy.net>
> Subject: The papers of the "Ad Hoc Committee on the Human Rights and
> Genocide Treaties"
>
> Knowing of your involvement in Genocide Studies, it seemed to me
> that you may be interested in knowing that the archival papers of
> the "Ad Hoc Committee on the Human Rights and Genocide Treaties"
> have been deposited at the Tamiment Library at New York University,
> and that an online finding aid / guide is available here {along with
> contact information of the library ...}:   http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/adhoc.html
> >> Arieh Lebowitz, Communications Director, Jewish Labor Committee
> {I am including the basic description below, and should add that the
> papers of the Jewish Labor Committee are also at the Robert F Wagner
> Labor Archives / Tamiment Library @ NYU.]
> Descriptive Summary
>
> Creator:	Ad Hoc Committee on the Human Rights and Genocide Treaties.
> Title:	Ad Hoc Committee on the Human Rights and Genocide Treaties
> Records
> Dates:	Bulk, 1960-1979
> Dates:	1943-1982, (Bulk 1960-1979)
> Abstract:	The Ad Committee on the Human Rights and Genocide Treaties
> was organized in the spring of 1964 by some 35 national voluntary
> organizations for the purpose of encouraging the United States
> government to commit itself, through ratification of four United
> Nations conventions (dealing with Genocide, Slavery, Forced Labor
> and the Political Rights of Women), to the building and
> strengthening of a body of international law in the field of human
> rights. The first such measure, concerned with the basic, inviolable
> right to life itself, was the Genocide Convention. Developed in the
> highly charged atmosphere of the years immediately following the
> Holocaust, it was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly in
> 1948 and signed, but never ratified, by the United States. The
> Committee's task was to overcome legislators' resistance to
> ratification, through direct lobbying, publicity campaigns and
> outreach to sympathetic sectors of the U.S. population. Under the
> leadership of its Executive Secretary, Betty Kaye Taylor (a long-
> time staff member of the Jewish Labor Committee) the Committee
> mobilized labor, civil rights, civil liberties, religious and
> fraternal organizations, and achieved a steadily growing body of
> support from Democratic and liberal Republican senators. But
> Congressional opposition and public indifference proved
> intransigent. The campaign was to last much longer, and was strewn
> with more bitter disappointments, than the organizers of the
> Committee could have imagined; ratification was finally achieved in
> 1986. The collection includes administrative records, publicity
> materials, reports, clippings, articles, and extensive
> correspondence with prominent supporters of ratification.
> Quantity:	6.0 Linear feet (6 boxes)
> Call Phrase:	WAG 037
> Return to top
> Historical/Biographical Note
>
> The Ad Committee on the Human Rights and Genocide Treaties was
> organized in the spring of 1964 by some 35 national voluntary
> organizations for the purpose of encouraging the United States
> government to commit itself, through ratification of four United
> Nations conventions (dealing with Genocide, Slavery, Forced Labor
> and the Political Rights of Women), to the building and
> strengthening of a body of international law in the field of human
> rights. The first such measure, concerned with the basic, inviolable
> right to life itself, was the Genocide Convention. Developed in the
> highly charged atmosphere of the years immediately following the
> Holocaust, it was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly in
> 1948 and signed, but never ratified, by the United States. Despite
> President John F. Kennedy's support for ratification of all four
> conventions, expressed in addresses to the U.S. Senate and the UN
> General Assembly in the summer and fall of 1963, Congressional
> resistance to ratification proved to be deeply entrenched. The
> Committee's task was to overcome that resistance, through direct
> lobbying, publicity campaigns and outreach to sympathetic sectors of
> the U.S. population. The campaign was to last much longer, and was
> strewn with more bitter disappointments, than the organizers of the
> Committee could have imagined.
>
> The organizations comprising the Ad Hoc Committee represented a wide
> range of civil liberties, religious, labor and fraternal groups,
> among them the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends
> Service Committee, the American Veterans Committee, B'nai B'rith,
> Hadassah, the Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO, the Jewish
> Labor Committee, the NAACP, the National Conference of Christians
> and Jews, the United Church of Christ, the Women's International
> League for Peace and Freedom, the Workmen's Circle, the Ukrainian
> National Association and several individual trade unions. Through
> the National Conference of Christians and Jews the Committee forged
> close ties with the social action wings of a number of Christian and
> Jewish denominations. The United Nations Association put the
> Committee in touch with liberal supporters of the UN nationwide, and
> by using its connections to the AFL-CIO and the Jewish Labor
> Committee the Committee garnered support throughout the labor
> movement.
>
> The day-to-day work of the Committee was coordinated by its able
> Executive Secretary, Betty Kaye Taylor. Born in Freeport, Long
> Island, Betty Kaye attended Freeport High School and the Morris High
> School in the Bronx. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin
> in 1946 and went to work as an organizer, based in Chicago, for the
> International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. Beginning in her high-
> school years she had been a political activist as a member of the
> Young People's Socialist League, and was eventually recommended by
> Daniel Bell to become an employee of the Jewish Labor Committee. She
> worked with JLC staffer (and Warsaw Ghetto survivor) Jerzy Glicksman
> in Chicago and transferred to the JLC's national office in New York
> in 1948. There she coordinated the work of the JLC's field
> representatives, edited Labor Reports (a JLC news service) and later
> became an assistant to the National Director. Bette Kaye Taylor
> remained on the JLC staff during her years of service to the Ad Hoc
> Committee. When she retired from the JLC in 1981, the work of the
> Committee was carried on by Hyman Bookbinder of the American Jewish
> Committee. Throughout the life of the Committee its work was greatly
> assisted by William Korey, foreign affairs director of B'nai B'rith
> and a leading scholar in the field of international human rights.
>
> In the course of its years of work, the Committee won the support of
> an impressive roster of prominent individuals, in and out of
> Congress. But its efforts met a long string of defeats. Although
> President Truman had urged ratification of the convention,
> xenophobia, isolationism, public indifference and the exigencies of
> superpower politics proved to be insuperable obstacles during four
> decades of Democratic and Republican administrations alike. In 1967
> the Committee's staunchest Congressional champion, Senator William
> Proxmire, delivered the first of innumerable speeches (sometimes
> daily statements) on the subject over the next twenty years.
> Throughout the horrors of Biafra, East Pakistan and Rwanda, the
> Senate continued to turn a deaf ear. After the Khmer Rouge
> atrocities in Cambodia became public several senators joined the
> battle for ratification, still to no avail. Ironically, as historian
> Brian Urquhart has pointed out (NY Review of Books, April 25, 2002,
> p.13), it was in the wake of the public relations disaster of
> President Ronald Reagan's visit to the SS graves at Bitburg,
> Germany, that the treaty was finally ratified. Even this gesture of
> concession to public outrage was undermined by a number of
> provisions immunizing the U.S. against the possibility of ever being
> charged with genocide. The vote in the Senate was 83 in favor, 11
> against and 6 not voting; the U.S. was the 98th country to ratify
> the convention.
>
> Sources:
>
>
> William Korey, `The United States and the Genocide Convention:
> Leading Advocate and Leading Obstacle,' Ethics and International
> Affairs, Vol. 11 (1997), pp. 271-290.
>
>
> Return to top
> Scope and Content Note
>
> The collection includes administrative records of the Ad Hoc
> Committee (reports, financial records, internal correspondence,
> etc.) as well as a comprehensive collection of the outreach and
> publicity materials generated during the campaign for U.S.
> ratification of the Genocide and other UN conventions (flyers,
> conference programs, mass mailings, magazine articles, clippings,
> statements from the Congressional record, etc.). The collection also
> includes numerous resolutions passed by member organizations in
> support of the campaign and polls of Congressional opinion on the
> issue.
>
> Notable individuals represented in files of correspondence with
> supporters of the Committee's work are Presidents John F. Kennedy,
> Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, Senator William Proxmire, Senator
> Hubert H. Humphrey, Senator J. William Fulbright, Senator Jacob K.
> Javits, Senator Edward M Kennedy, Arthur J. Goldberg, William Korey,
> David Dubinsky, Herschel Halbert, Telford Taylor and Martin Luther
> King, Jr., among others.
>
>
>
>
>

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