Prepared by The University of Iowa Center for Human Rights (UICHR)*

8.1 — Percent of Iowa children under 19 years of age who live at 200% or more below the poverty line and who are not covered by health insurance, with New Mexico having the highest U.S. rate as 21.2 percent, and Minnesota the lowest at 3.9 percent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002)

14.6 — Percent of Americans without any health insurance coverage in 2001 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002)

20 — Percent of persons convicted of a crime on the basis of false confessions but later exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence (Newsweek, 16 Dec 2002)

22.7 & 21.4 — Percent of African-Americans and Hispanics, respectively, in the United States who lived at or below the poverty line in 2001, compared to the national average of 11.7 percent for all ethnicities during the same period (Institute for Research on Poverty, 2003)

60 — Number of Mexican immigrants (including 12 children under 6 years of age) found by police in Queens, New York, in Summer 1997 to have been held in involuntary servitude (NY Times, 20 Jun 1997)

65 — Approximate percent of Native Americans unemployed in 2001, in contrast to the national unemployment average of approximately 4 percent the same year (Business Week, 26 Nov 2001)

176 — Number of death penalty convictions in the United States since 1976 for murders committed by blacks against whites, compared to 12 death penalty convictions since 1976 for murders committed by whites against blacks (Death Penalty Information Center, 2002)

400-500 — Number of men with whom women, trafficked into the U.S. in 1996, were forced to have sex to pay off the $40,000 debt owed to traffickers for their illegal passage to the U.S. (Christian Science Monitor, 23 Oct 1996)

1,299 — Number of hate crimes committed in the U.S. during 2000, according to the FBI, because of the sexual orientation of the victim (Human Rights Campaign, 2002)

300,000-800,000 — Estimated number of child farm workers in the United States who, as of at least October 2000, labored in dangerous and grueling conditions, typically for 12 or more hours daily (sometimes beginning at 3:00 to 4:00 a.m.) and often for as little as $2 an hour (Human Rights Watch, 2002)

*First published in The Iowa Review (Volume 33, Number 1) Spring 2003. Copyright © 2003 by The University of Iowa Center for Human Rights. For further information on human rights generally, please visit the UICHR web site.