Leahy Law

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The Leahy Law or Leahy provision is a human rights stipulation in U.S. congressional foreign assistance legislation.[1] The Leahy Law prohibits U.S. military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights with impunity. It is named after its principal sponsor, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.[2]

Contents

[edit] History

The law first appeared in the fiscal year 1997 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, and has been attached to all subsequent acts.[3] Since it is impossible to know in practice the names of the individuals who committed the human rights violations, the U.S. government applies the law by examining the human rights history of a unit. The State Department has interpreted a unit to mean a brigade, which is approximately 3,000 soldiers.[4]

Each U.S. embassy has established a "vetting procedure" to review the backgrounds of military units for which assistance has been proposed.[2] To date, foreign aid to Colombia has been the main focus of the law.[5][3][6]

[edit] Two different laws

The Leahy Law in the 2001 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act (Section 563 of Pub.L. 106-429) states:

“ None of the funds made available by this Act may be provided to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible evidence that such unit has committed gross violations of human rights, unless the Secretary determines and reports to the Committees on Appropriations that the government of such country is taking effective measures to bring the responsible members of the security forces unit to justice.[1] ”

In reality there are actually two different Leahy Laws. One is attached to the Defense Appropriations and the other is within the Foreign Operations Appropriations.[7][8] The Foreign Operations Appropriations Leahy Law cover weapons funding and training, but the 2001 Defense Appropriations act Leahy Law only covers training. Both Leahy provisions have similar wording.

The Leahy Law version attached to the Foreign Operations Appropriations has no waivers,[8] but the Leahy Law in the Defense Appropriations version can be waived if the Secretary of Defense determines that “extraordinary circumstances” require it.[9]

[edit] Waiver and withholding

The Defense Appropriations version of the Leahy Law allows the Secretary of Defense to waive the provision if he determines that "extraordinary circumstances" require it.[2] On August 22, 2000 President Clinton signed a presidential waiver excluding all but one of the human rights considerations for funding for Plan Colombia.[10][6]

During yearly reviews, military aid has been withheld from some specific Colombian military units, such as the Palanquero Air Force base and the Army's XVII Brigade.[11][12]

[edit] Criticisms of the law

Authors Doug Stokes and lawyer John Barry argue that there are major weaknesses to the law.[5] [10]

Stokes argues the law has four weaknesses which make it effectively useless.[13]

First, the Colombian military and US embassy in Colombia have had procedures to circumvent the "vetting procedure" ever since human rights were attached to military funding in 1998. [14] In a September 1997 letter to Senator Leahy, United States Ambassador to Colombia Curtis Kamman stated that the list of potential units which would receive aid “was judged to be severely deficient.”[14] An anonymous U.S. official told the Washington Post that "the Colombian army had difficulty finding any units without serious human rights violations, thus slowing the process. "The question is, is there anyone we can deal with out there?" the official asked." [15] Five months later, in January and February 1998, the Colombian defense minister submitted a new list to the US ambassador. US Ambassador Kamman stated that the delay was because the brigade needed to transfer out two officers accused of human rights abuses.[14] Simply transferring officers accused of human rights abuses to make a unit "clean" is a clear violation of the Leahy Law, which states, that aid is conditional on the Colombian government "taking effective measures to bring the responsible members of the security forces unit to justice."[1] Further, as Human Rights Watch discovered, if a unit is "considered important enough to drug war objectives…the U.S. will violate the Leahy Provision in order to continue funding and training it." [16] For example, the US State Department informed the Colombian government that the US “will not consider providing assistance to the 17th Brigade [in Urabá, northwestern Colombia] until all significant human rights allegations involving the unit have been credibly addressed.”[17] But the 18th brigade, which is stationed in the oil fields of Arauca, Colombia, and which is the focus of numerous human rights violation allegations, continues to receive US military aid.[18]

The second way that the U.S. and Colombian government circumvent the Leahy law is by "by allowing vetted units to mix, coordinate logistics with, and share the facilities of suspended units".[19]

The third way that the U.S. and Colombia government circumvent the Leahy law is that when a unit is vetted it is cleared, but once the unit has been vetted, new soldiers who come into the unit are not screened. [20]

Finally, the Leahy law is circumvented by the US contacting with private contractors to avoid legal oversight.[10] In September 2004, After Congress set a United States civilian contractor cap at 400, DynCorp, a weapons supplier for the military, hired foreign nationals to work in Colombia, which effectively circumvented Congressional authority. [21] Also, the hundreds of DynCorp nonmilitary civilian war personnel are not counted under the Congressional cap.[22] In 2001, DynCorp rescued a shot down Colombian helicopter crew. During this search and rescue, DynCorp was involved in a battle with rebels, and it was revealed for the first time that DynCorp had four helicopter gun ships. Despite this, the Bush administration continues to assert that civilian contractors are not involved in warfare.[23] The former ambassador to Colombia, Myles Frechette explained why private mercenaries are so convenient, "It's very handy to have an outfit not part of the U.S. armed forces. Obviously, if somebody gets killed or whatever, you can say it's not a member of the armed forces. Nobody wants to see American military men killed."[24] This government-private sector partnership therefore seriously undermines the Leahy law, which only covers public money and official US equipment and soldiers, and like the paramilitaries, it provides "plausible deniability" for the U.S. government.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c Foreign Operations, Exporting Financing –Appropriations, Pub.L. 106-563 § 563, 114 Stat. 1900 (2000)
  2. ^ a b c Limitation on Assistance to Security Forces (The "Leahy Law") (HTML). Center for International Policy (September 2, 2003). Retrieved on April 23, 2006.
  3. ^ a b Human Rights Watch, The "Sixth Division": Military-Paramilitary Ties and U.S. Policy in Colombia 10 (Joanne Mariner & Malcolm Smart eds., 2001)
  4. ^ Human Rights Watch, p. 86.
  5. ^ a b Barry, John (Spring 2002). "From Drug War to Dirty War: Plan Colombia and the U.S. Role in Human Rights Violations in Colombia". Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems 12: 161. 
  6. ^ a b Limitation on Assistance, ibid. The article states: Within Latin America, the Leahy Law has been most vigorously enforced in Colombia.
  7. ^ Dept. of Defense Appropriations Act, Pub.L. 106-259 § 8092, 114 Stat. 656 (2000).
  8. ^ a b Barry, p. 186.
  9. ^ Just the Facts: A Civilian's Guide to U.S. Defense and Security Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean. HTML. Center for International Policy (December 2, 2005). Retrieved on April 23, 2006. p. 147.
  10. ^ a b c Stokes, Doug (2005). America's Other War : Terrorizing Colombia. Zed Books. ISBN 1-84277-547-2.  p. 99
  11. ^ El Tiempo: The nation is sentenced to pay 2000 million pesos to the victims of the attack on Santo Domingo. HTML. International Labor Rights Fund (May 26, 2004). Retrieved on May 7, 2006.
  12. ^ Revista Semana: El senado norteamericano pone objeciones a la Brigada XVII por violaciones. HTML. Equipo Nizkor (December 11, 2005). Retrieved on May 7, 2006.
  13. ^ Stokes, p. 97.
  14. ^ a b c Human Rights Watch, p. 95.
  15. ^ Douglas Farah, U.S. Aid in Limbo as Colombian Army Fails to Provide Evidence on Rights Abuses, Washington Post, January 10, 1998, at A20.
  16. ^ Human Rights Watch, p. 96-100.
  17. ^ Memorandum of Justification concerning Human Rights Conditions with Respect to Assistance for Colombian Armed Forces, U.S. Dept. of State 5 (Wash. August 1, 2005).
  18. ^ Erasing the Lines: Trends in U.S. military programs with Latin America 12 (Center for International Policy 2005) available at http://www.ciponline.org/facts/0512eras.pdf.
  19. ^ Human Rights Watch, p. 100.
  20. ^ Human Rights Watch, p. 102.
  21. ^ Kristen McCallion, War For Sale! Battlefield Contractors in Latin America & the 'Corporatization' of America's War on Drugs, 36 U. Miami Inter-Am. L. Rev. 317 (Winter, 2005 / Spring, 2005). p. 338.
  22. ^ Nicholas von Hoffman, Contract killers: how privatizing the U.S. military subverts public oversight, Harper's Magazine, June 1, 2004 at 81.
  23. ^ McCallion, p. 342.
  24. ^ Paul De La Garza , Military aid . . . from the private sector, St. Petersburg Times, December 3, 2000 at 1A.
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