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Tavis: Ajamu Baraka's a long-time human rights activist and organizer who serves as executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network. In that capacity, he was in Geneva last week attending the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination. Ajamu, nice to have you on the program.

Ajamu Baraka: Glad to be here, my pleasure.

Tavis: First of all, tell me about the work that you do before I talk about this gathering of the UN in Geneva.

Baraka: I'm the director of the U.S. Human Rights Network, a network of over 250 organizations committed to building a new human rights movement here in this country. And we've been involved in this work for the last three years now.

Tavis: When you say building a new human rights movement, what do we mean by that?

Baraka: A movement that is committed to bring about accountability, U.S. accountability to international human rights within the U.S. For the most part, most people think of human rights as something out there, outside of the U.S. But we are building a movement that is committed to applying human rights standards to U.S. practice within the U.S., both in terms of its domestic policy and also its international policy.

Tavis: One of the arguments - the flip side of your argument is - and we hear this all the time from certain circles - that the U.S. is a sovereign nation. That we do not have the responsibility, the duty, the right, or the obligation to make anything that we do subject to some international governing authority. To that, you say?

Baraka: If that was the case, then the U.S. would not have signed on to various human rights treaties, it would not pretend to be a leader of human rights worldwide, it would not argue for the rule of law. So we say that basically, that is contradictory argument. Instead, what we argue is that the U.S., like other sovereign nations, has to live up to its responsibilities, the responsibilities it took on when it signed on various human rights treaties.

So we say there has to be one standard for all nations. So the notion of U.S. exceptionalism is something that we are opposed to.

Tavis: So tell me, then, about this gathering in Geneva, the title of it again, and what the purpose of the gathering was.

Baraka: Well, the gathering was the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a UN monitoring body. It was tasked with the responsibility of reviewing the U.S.'s report that is submitted to this committee. This committee is tasked with the responsibility of ensuring, or monitoring, compliance of various states with this treaty.

The treaty, of course, is the convention to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination, a treaty the U.S. signed back in 1994, which then obligates it to send in these periodic reports. Well, the U.S. was tardy in their reporting process and they combined a number of reports, and they finally sent one in back in April of 2007.

The committee then takes that report; they will review it and have questions for the U.S. delegation. In response to that or as a part of that process, in many parts of the world civil society will come together and they will write what is known as a shadow report - a report that is seen as something to serve as a corrective to the official governmental report.

And so this year, the U.S. Human Rights Network, we organized a shadow report. We organized over 100 organizations and submitted a 649-page or so shadow report to the same committee.

Tavis: So what did, in essence, the report of our nation say that caused enough consternation inside the human rights community for it to want to do, to feel the need to do, a shadow report, and what did that report say relative to what the U.S. report officially said?

Baraka: Well, the issue was that the report didn't say much of anything. Basically, it glossed over most of the burning issues in this country. That basically it was sort of a report that patted the U.S. on its collective back, saying that they had lived up to their responsibility.

They did not deal with some of the issues that we feel are important, the ongoing police brutality that we find in various parts of the country, they glossed over the Katrina issue, they did not deal with the impact of the terrorism that communities and the Latin community are experiencing as a consequence of ICE raids. They did not talk about the kinds of racial targeting that's taking place in the Arab and Muslim communities; they did not talk about the situation that native people are still facing in terms of trying to fight for their rights.

So it glossed over many of the major issues, so we felt compelled to write a corrective, and we did that. And when the U.S. was reviewed last week, they had the U.S. report on one side, and they had the shadow report on the other. And they used that shadow report as the evidence they needed to raise serious questions of the U.S. report.

Tavis: So when all was said and done, how was the U.S. report treated or received by this governing body?

Baraka: Well, they had to take the report seriously because it's an official governmental report. But they also had to take our shadow report serious also, because it was a very well-written, thoroughly documented report that dealt with all of the issues that were missing in the U.S. report. And it referred to that report over and over again in the questioning of the U.S. delegation.

The U.S. took this seriously because they sent a 24-person delegation to Geneva to defend their report, and we had well over 100 activists there, also.

Tavis: Two questions: who's the highest-ranking person as a part of our delegation, and what division of our government actually prepares this report?

Baraka: The report was prepared by the State Department, but they work with other agencies within the government, also. They have the assistant attorney general for civil rights, who was on the delegation. The delegation was headed up by the UN ambassador in Geneva. They employed some consultants - Ralph Boyd, (unintelligible) official in the Bush administration was part of the delegation. So they brought a number of people there to defend their report and to defend their standing.

Tavis: When you go to an international gathering like the one you were at in Geneva, how does - this is not a fair question, but how are we viewed, by and large, by folk at a gathering, at an international gathering like this, on our human rights issues?

Baraka: Unfortunately in the last few years, not too well. The U.S. has forfeited much of its moral responsibility of its actions in Iraq, it's so-called war on terror, of the fact that it has failed to live up to its obligations under the CAT treaty, the Convention Against Torture, redefining torture, for example. It has given cover to despots around the world by stepping back from its obligations and its standing for human rights around the world. So basically there's great skepticism when it comes to the U.S.

Tavis: You mentioned earlier that their report pretty much glossed over the Katrina issue. I was just in New Orleans just days ago. You happen to be a Black male, obviously. I'm an African American male. How is that issue viewed, what the government did or did not do that the whole world saw on international television. How is that issue viewed or talked about in the hallways at a conference like this?

Baraka: Well, that was one of the first issues that was brought up officially in terms of questions to the U.S. delegation. Around the world, people are perplexed and sometimes even outraged at what they have seen as a failure of this government to respond in a forthright way to the sufferings of the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

So it's a question that comes up in these international arenas constantly, and it came up last week at the committee. The concern is that it doesn't appear that the U.S., the national authorities, have taken the level of responsibility that they were supposed to have in order to create the conditions to allow people to resume their lives, to heal themselves, to rebuild the Gulf Coast.

And because we're talking about the richest country on this planet, it's a question for many people around the world why after two and a half years we still see the same conditions we see in New Orleans.

Tavis: There's always conversation, as you know here Stateside, about Katrina fatigue. That maybe we've talked this thing to death and people gave a lot of money, billions of dollars in the beginning, but maybe Katrina fatigue has set in. I wonder whether or not that's your sense? It's one thing to go to these international bodies and half folk raise human rights issues.

I guess the question is whether or not you think here Stateside we view what happened in Katrina and what happens or doesn't happen in other places, whether we as Americans view these as human rights abuses and violations.

Baraka: Well, I don't think that we see them as human rights violations yet. I think that the people who have been -

Tavis: Should we?

Baraka: We should, because they are. Basically, when you have a situation where people were placed into a dangerous situation, living in New Orleans, for example, and you have the national authorities taking the responsibilities to ensure that people's lives, their livelihoods, are protected, and that didn't happen. Where you have a levee system that was only built to withstand a category three hurricane, and therefore the result being that people have lost their lives and their property, then it's clear that the government has not lived up to its responsibility to protect life. That's the fundamental principle of human rights - the right to life and the protection of life.

So you go from there, you look at the evacuation process, you look at what happened in the Dome, you look at the hesitation by the government to respond forthrightly to people who were displaced, you look at the fact that two and a half years later, people are still displaced, communities have not been rebuilt, and basically all of these are seen as violations of people's fundamental human rights around the world.

Tavis: How do you deal with - and I assume you've heard this before in your work over the many years - how do you deal with people who label you, label the work that you do and others who do work like you do, anti-American? How dare you go to an international conference? We have an official delegation and a hundred of y'all out in the hallway with a shadow report. How do you respond personally to that kind of criticism that the work that you're engaged in, trying to check America, is really anti-American behavior?

Baraka: No, we are human rights defenders, and basically our only constituency are the people. And basically, we speak truth to power. So our responsibility is to try to make the people aware of the fact that there are these human rights treaties that the U.S. has signed onto, some of them. That these treaties reflect certain kinds of values that we believe are important for the American people to know about and to struggle for.

So we are in some ways sort of exercising our duties as U.S. citizens and residents, and making the U.S. population aware of the fact that these human rights exist, but that they don't have access to those rights. That's the contradiction. So our responsibility is to engage in human rights education, to struggle, and to bring about the conditions where all of us can fully experience our human rights.

Tavis: The U.S. Human Rights Network is his organization. His name, of course, Ajamu Baraka. Thank you for your work and glad to have you on the program.

Baraka: My pleasure to be here.

Tavis: Good to see you.