Some Selected Treaties and Conventions rejected by President George W. Bush:
U.N. Population Fund: funding ended on July 22, 2002, citing its activities in China, where birth control has been coercive even though a State Department fact-finding mission in May found no evidence that the program knowingly participated in proscribed activities involving abortion or sterilization. China is not the only country from which aid is withheld.
International Planned Parenthood Federation: More than 180 countries receive no American money for any of the International Planned Parenthood Federation's work because those countries provide access to abortion even though the U.S. money is not used for those services.
1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.
1995 Biological Weapons Convention: George W. Bush abandoned a United Nations draft accord that sets out ways to enforce the treaty in July, 2001.
1997 Land Mine Ban Treaty (Ottawa Convention on Land Mines): rejected by Bush, supported by 156 nations and ratified by 45 nations.
1997 Kyoto treaty to combat global warming: George W. Bush made the United States the only country in the world to oppose the treaty (178 other nations agreed to it) .
1997 treaty creating the International Criminal Court, the first permanent international tribunal to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity: signed by former president Bill Clinton. George W. Bush withdrew his signature from the agreement.
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW: adopted in 1979 by the U.N. General Assembly and is often described as an international bill of rights for women. It was signed by President Carter in 1980 and has been ratified by every industrialized country in the world except the United States. On July 30, 2002, the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, over the objection of Mr. Bush, approved the treaty.
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union: rejected in July, 2001.
U.N. pact to stem the illegal flow of small arms, from handguns to shoulder-launched rockets: U.S. officials signed on only after blocking two key provisions that would have restricted arms owned by civilians and sold to rebels, July, 2001.
1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: prohibits all nuclear test explosions. The Senate rejected the treaty in 1999, but Bush has promised to abide by a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing.
1993 START II: would require Washington and Moscow to reduce their arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons from 6,000 to a range of 3,000 to 3,500 by 2007; Bush has no plans to ask the Senate to ratify changes to the nuclear disarmament treaty, a condition Russia has set for ratifying the treaty and putting it into force. The chief U.S. author of that accord: Bush's father.
- "Bush and senior advisers say international conventions are worth joining only if the benefits to the United States are clear." USA Today, July, 2001.