Activists: Katrina Survivors Treated Worse Than Dogs

More than two years after Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of Katrina survivors are still trapped in FEMA trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi.

After years of denying the trailers exposed occupants to dangerous levels of formaldehyde fumes, FEMA has finally come clean. It is now "aggressively" moving people out of the toxic travel trailers.

Meanwhile, homeless Katrina pets have found shelter after the storm. Indeed, the disparate treatment of displaced African Americans and dogs was captured in the iconic images of dogs being evacuated in air-conditioned comfort while blacks were packed in the back of a truck.

Today in Geneva, Switzerland, representatives of the United States government will appear before the United Nations' Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CRED), where they will be questioned about housing assistance programs for Katrina survivors. The session is the culmination of efforts by the US Human Rights Network to hold the federal government accountable.

In a report to CRED, the human rights coalition said the federal government's response to Katrina and FEMA's disastrous housing assistance violate the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. As a signatory, the U.S. must periodically report its compliance with the human rights treaty.

Monique Harden, a Katrina survivor and co-director of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, said: "The demolition of public housing, the growing number of homeless people, the utter failure of the Road Home Program, the complete disregard of renters, police harassment of African Americans, and racial disparities in flood protection are evidence of ethnic cleansing by our government that abuses the human rights of mostly African American residents of New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region."

Background information, including briefing documents, are available on the United Nations' Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination web site.

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