This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo formally announced the creation of a “Commission on Unalienable Rights.” Its stated purpose, according to a notice published in the Federal Register in May, is to provide “fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.”
The Trump administration’s actions and words — from threatening International Criminal Court judges and prosecutors, pulling out of the U.N. Human Rights Council and severing relations with its independent experts, to cozying up with authoritarian leaders and advancing xenophobic policies that defy international law — have made it abundantly clear that the administration has zero interest in being a global champion of human rights. This commission isn’t fooling anyone.
We know that references to “natural law and natural rights” are code words used by the religious right and social conservatives to advance anti-LGBTQ and anti-women’s rights agendas. We also know that members of the new commission have troubling anti-LGBTQ and abortion rights records. And based on the Trump administration’s record, there is good reason to believe the commission is intended to redefine universal human rights to fit the administration’s twisted and troubling worldview, with the clear and first target being the State Department’s long-standing work to advance the rights of LGBTQ people, women, and other vulnerable populations across the world.
In defending the commission in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Secretary Pompeo charged that human rights advocates have created “new categories of rights” that “blur the distinction between unalienable rights and ad hoc rights granted by governments.” And that the commission will “ground our discussion of human rights in America’s founding principles.”
That’s a load of nonsense. Secretary Pompeo speaks of longstanding international human rights norms as if he’s demonstrated a single iota of respect for them, and as if those norms are incongruent with defending human dignity and democratic values.
The Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) — which Secretary Pompeo names as a foundational document that will be examined by the commission — is grounded in democratic values of equal rights, justice, and the right to self-determination. It establishes the modern international human rights framework that provides the legal and moral authority to hold governments and other perpetrators accountable for human rights violations — a framework that the Trump administration seems bent on dismantling.
What Secretary Pompeo fails to understand, or perhaps acknowledge, is that this modern international human rights framework is made up of the very same traditions and values that also guided America’s democratic origins. In fact, all too often in our modern history, it is the U.S. — irrespective of the political party in power — that has failed to live up to the UDHR, including the UDHR’s promise of economic justice. Different groups throughout American history, including indigenous peoples, enslaved African people, and women, among others, have all been the victims of America’s double-standard.
When the United States has wavered on its commitment at home and abroad, it is the UDHR in many cases that has provided the framework to hold our country’s leaders accountable. That’s because the full spectrum of rights enshrined in the UDHR are preordained by well-recognized democratic values, traditions, and principles, including the founding principles of our democracy.
The world has now witnessed the human costs of the Trump administration’s atrocious disregard for these basic human rights and democratic values: the inhumanity of family separation and detention, the discriminatory Muslim ban, the upended lives from the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the revival of the racist ‘War on Drugs,’ numerous attempts to roll back advances in LGBTQ equality, trampling on the rights of women, and illegal restrictions on the rights of asylum seekers. Having had it with the world naming and shaming under the international human rights framework, the administration appears to be trying to find moral footing for President Trump’s discriminatory policies with the announcement of this commission.
Make no mistake: Pompeo’s commission is a dangerous initiative intended to redefine universal human rights and roll back decades of progress in achieving full rights for marginalized and historically oppressed communities. It is likely to use religion as grounding to deny human dignity and equality for all. It will undermine the existing State Department’s well respected and legally-mandated Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs. And it will be a waste of taxpayer dollars, which would be better spent on implementing U.S. human rights treaty obligations and putting an end to Trump’s era of human misery and assault on our humanity.
We won’t let him get away with it.
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News & CommentaryDec 2024
Human Rights
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News & CommentaryDec 2024
Racial Justice
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Press ReleaseOct 2024
Human Rights
Free Speech
Universities Should Protect Students’ Right to Protest, End Crackdown on Peaceful ProtestsUniversities Should Protect Students’ Right to Protest, End Crackdown on Peaceful Protests
WASHINGTON – College and university presidents across the U.S. need to respect and protect the right to protest in support of Palestinian rights the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch said today in an open letter. For months the organizations have raised concerns about the potential use of unlawful force when university administrators call in law enforcement officers to break up demonstrations on campus. This new letter comes after reports of heavy-handed and excessive force by some campus police and local law enforcement against peaceful protests and encampments across the country. The groups provide recommendations for colleges and universities to ensure they protect the right to protest on their campuses. The organizations also urge university administrations to refrain from taking any further measures to suppress student protests on campus, including stopping the use of so-called less lethal weapons and ensuring that coercive police power is used only as a last resort, among other recommendations. “Universities are responsible for protecting both physical safety and free expression on campus,” said Jamil Dakwar, director at the ACLU’s Human Rights Program. “It’s deeply concerning to see universities needlessly expose students to police violence for peacefully expressing their political opinions. We’re urging schools once again to exercise restraint, practice de-escalation, and protect free speech and dissent on campus.” Preliminary analysis by Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps has identified at least 174 photos, videos, or social media posts from 20 universities of potential excessive use of force by law enforcement under international law that merits further investigation. This includes 17 universities where chemical irritants such as pepper spray appear to have been used against student protesters, and 11 universities where officers appear to have responded to protests armed with kinetic impact projectiles such as rubber bullets. The results of this use of force by law enforcement agencies have been devastating, including media-verified reports of severe injuries such as bleeding puncture wounds, head injuries, broken teeth, and suspected broken bones, most notably at the University of California Los Angeles, Columbia University, and the City College of New York. The Digital Verification Corps also documented at least 10 other universities where photos or videos capture potential injuries to students. It found that half of the incidents involving injuries under investigation appear to be the result of chemical irritants. “The information we have gathered on excessive use of force against student protesters is extremely worrisome and we are still in the beginning of our investigation,” said Justin Mazzola, researcher with Amnesty International USA. “With the continuation of the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza and the risk of US complicity through the sending of weapons, campus protests in favor of stopping the violence and destruction will continue. Universities have a responsibility to protect academic freedom and the rights to freedom of expression, and to peacefully protest, and we will be watching to ensure they do.” The ACLU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch are not alone in their concern. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and several UN experts, including the UN special rapporteur on the right to education, have criticized the violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators by law enforcement and disciplinary measures against students exercising their rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression. All higher education institutions, even private colleges and universities, where the First Amendment is not applicable, have a responsibility to respect the right to freedom of peaceful assembly under international law. “Instead of resorting to police action that both shuts down free speech and heightens the risk of injuries, universities need to do more to protect student speech from violence and intimidation, and actively ensure that peaceful student expression continues without interference,” said Tanya Greene, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch. As the letter explains, the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, and Human Rights Watch are conducting research and analysis of how campus administrators are responding to student protests. They urge universities to fulfill their human rights responsibilities by facilitating protests and ensuring that all students' rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, regardless of viewpoint, is respected. A comprehensive joint report on this issue is slated to be released by the ACLU and Amnesty International USA in the coming months. The open letter is available here: https://www.aclu.org/documents/letter-to-universities-student-protesters -
News & CommentaryOct 2024
Immigrants' Rights
Human Rights
Three Ways the Media Introduces Bias to the Immigration DebateThree Ways the Media Introduces Bias to the Immigration Debate
Ahead of the election, we examined how political ads and news media stories depict the immigration debate as more negative than it may be.