The best example is perhaps the Filartiga case, making it possible for human rights violators outside the United States to be prosecuted here. We can t minimize the importance of ratification and getting laws on the books. These can be used to great effect in our organizing. There is a troika of rights, needs and entitlements. If people are being deprived in an offensive way, we say their rights are being violated.
Needs represent what people perceive as deprivation.
Entitlements are decided politically and can be taken away with the next policy shift. There has been much discussion in South Africa on how to avoid the mistakes of the U.S. civil rights movement in its exclusive focus on political and civil rights. The series of UN conferences is now over because the U.S. government has called an end to them. We should demand that they go forward. We must continue to use the UN to advance our work.