History
The law first appeared in the fiscal year 1997 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, and has been attached to all subsequent acts. 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.
Each U.S. embassy has established a "vetting procedure" to review the backgrounds of military units for which assistance has been proposed. To date, foreign aid to Colombia has been the main focus of the law.
Read more about this topic: Leahy Law
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“I feel as tall as you.”
—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)