CAP Hosts Human Rights Conference

April 14, 2008

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Morning Keynote Address: The Honorable Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State

“The America I love is the world’s best defender and exemplar of laws,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the audience at the conference on “The Future of Human Rights” co-sponsored by the Center for American Progress and Georgetown Law on Tuesday, April 8. This reputation has been tarnished in recent years by everything from the grave abuses at Abu Ghraib to the shame of Guantanamo Bay. The world now sees America reflected in the infamous photo of a hooded prisoner being tortured by American soldiers, not the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Our job now is to “show that America is exceptional due to our commitment to justice” and restore our reputation as a defender of rights. America needs to close Guantanamo Bay and throw away the key as a first step toward regaining respect in the international community. Our signature ought to be added to the International Criminal Court and negotiations should begin with China over the situation in Tibet.

Secretary Albright argued forcefully, however, that change has to occur in the hearts and minds of the people in order for human rights to succeed. “Freedom leads not only to the voting booth, but to food on the table and a better life,” and yet the United States is not conveying that message. Human rights are not “propaganda to remove sovereignty;” rather, they are a tool of freedom which ensure self-determination.

Yet the media has not been an effective tool in spreading the message of human rights, said Albright. The media’s sporadic coverage of situations such as Darfur, New Orleans, and Tibet is rarely deep enough to capture the extended attention of the American people. Americans, said Albright, are “the most generous people in the world with the shortest attention span.” In addition, our educational system is failing our children by not teaching geography and the social studies skills needed to be effective global citizens.

Nonetheless, Albright is optimistic about America’s ability to integrate a host of tools, both in foreign and domestic policy, to strengthen the cause of human rights. When the question of sanctions inevitably arose, she deftly turned the discussion from ”full sanctions” to ”smart sanctions,” those sanctions that are targeted at leaders and their cronies instead of the masses. Similarly, negotiations and diplomacy need to be a leading tool in the fight against torture, corruption, and injustice. Albright emphasized that revitalizing America’s soft power and using our strength to promote human rights ought to be fundamental goals of the new administration.

• Read Madeline Albright's full remarks (pdf)

Morning Panel Discussion: How Should the United States Deal with Human Rights Abuses of Partners and Allies?

Allegations of human rights violations are not isolated to the political turmoil of Tibet or the refugee camps of Darfur. Several U.S. economic partners and allies—Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and China—are among the most notorious human rights offenders in the world. The conference’s first panel, moderated by Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Brian Katulis, discussed how a new administration could develop policies that would reduce such violations.

U.S. credibility as a human rights champion has plummeted in recent years, thanks to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and the war in Iraq. This has limited the United States’s ability to promote human rights policy. Panelist and former U.S. Ambassador to China James Sasser said the Chinese view the U.S. human rights record as hypocritical.

The first thing a new administration should do, said former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic John Shattuck, is get its own human rights house in order. This would dissolve the paradox of America’s unparalleled economic and military power coupled with its plummeting legitimacy and global reputation.

Ambassador Sasser reflected upon a notable lack of human rights dialogue and policies in Sino-American relations during his tenure in China. Instead, economic and security interests guided discussions and policies, then as now. But China’s elaborate dedication to the 2008 Olympics shows its desire for respect as a player on the world stage. This is an opportunity for the United States to reintroduce human rights to the dialogue, but we should do so in partnership with the European Union and other allies who share our values.

China’s neighbor Pakistan, another one of the United States’ key allies in the region, poses a different challenge. The recent elections there were more of a popular tool of counterinsurgency than an exercise of constitutional democracy, said Steve Coll, president and CEO of the New America Foundation. Pakistan will not exist peacefully with itself and neighboring states unless a democratic order is established. The United States can play only a limited role in this process, but one thing we can do is to reallocate aid from Pakistani military to Pakistani civil society, media, and human rights groups; recognize the violation of human rights in Pakistan by both state and militia groups; and work to reduce regional frictions that will lead to actual threats.

Egypt is another area in which the United States’ policy of giving compromises human rights in that country. Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, said that even though Egypt has been in a military state of emergency for the past 30 years, has repressed peaceful demonstrators, and has held ineffective elections, America has given billions of dollars to Egypt as a key ally. The Bush administration has isolated Egypt’s reformers while allowing the Mubarak regime to increase repression and empowering extremists. The United States will only increase security and stability for itself and Egypt when it promotes an open political climate, assesses its own policies according to human rights objectives, and backs human rights defenders in Egypt.

America needs to get back into the business of human rights. The best way to do so, said Shattuck, would be for the next administration to immediately close Guantanamo Bay, follow international human rights treaties, re-sign the International Criminal Court treaty, and recommit to the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. Multilateral connections on basic issues, honest presentation of facts, and an improvement in the rule of law will be far more successful than coercive, unilateral human rights agendas.

The bottom line is that the United States must raise the bar on its commitment to democracy and human rights and tone down its unilateral, self-interested human rights rhetoric. But the rhetoric of human rights and democracy will “remain perverted,” Sassar reminded the audience, until America makes it clear that we do not think democracy comes in the barrel of a gun.

• Read the full transcript of this panel (pdf)

Afternoon Keynote Address: Dr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court is a new and developing legal institution but it has the power to influence Sudan’s political and military leaders to end the genocide in Darfur, said ICC prosecutor Dr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who presented Tuesday’s afternoon keynote address. He was introduced by Justice Richard Goldstone, who acknowledged the grave challenge that Dr. Moreno-Ocampo faces: addressing monstrous crimes in multiple countries while working against the Bush administration’s opposition to the ICC.

The ICC is an independent, impartial institution that represents no state or party—only the rule of international law. According to Dr. Moreno-Ocampo, the Court represents a valuable and comprehensive legal framework for transnational justice. The creation of the ICC was a momentous step in the protection of human rights. At the time of its creation in 1998, then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan pleaded with the international community to take the ICC seriously. Dr. Moreno-Ocampo – the ICC’s first prosecutor – reiterated that plea: States have a duty to commit themselves to criminal prosecution via the ICC.

From the beginning, Dr. Moreno-Ocampo had the unprecedented task of sorting through 472 communications that the ICC received from 65 countries. He prioritized the cases, accepting only the gravest situations in states where the government is unable or unwilling to address the issue. The ICC must remain diligently committed to its legal jurisdiction, Moreno-Ocampo stressed, so it will not pursue allegations of war crimes by U.S. troops in Iraq (neither the United States nor Iraq have ratified the ICC).

The ICC is still an unfamiliar entity and the world’s nations and leaders need to adjust to this new legal framework. Encouraging political actors to both respect and enforce the ICC's legal framework is a great challenge, he said. He criticized some political actors as making judgments that ignore the reality of criminal law.

No case demonstrates the challenge in implementing the ICC’s authority more than Darfur. Gathering necessary evidence is difficult, as is protecting the victims that provide the ICC with information and interviews. Nevertheless, victims in Darfur are generally proud to tell their stories. The ICC can "send a signal" to Sudan's political and military leaders that the international community is watching and will hold them accountable.

If you know that your babysitter is raping your child, Dr. Moreno-Ocampo said, you would not place a video camera in the home to record the incident night after night. You would do everything in your power to stop the babysitter. And Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo will use the full extent of the ICC’s developing legal leverage to stop the murders in Darfur.

• Read Luis Moreno Ocampo's full remarks (pdf)

Afternoon Panel Discussion: Introducing Social and Economic Rights into U.S. Policy

Franklin D. Roosevelt argued that “freedom from want” was an American value well before the rest of the world institutionalized the notion of human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). In fact, it was his notion of basic economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights that laid the groundwork for the UDHR. Even so, economic and social rights are generally given a back seat to civil and political rights in U.S. policies and priorities.

At the crossroads of a new century and a new administration, panelists in the conference’s afternoon panel agreed that civil and political rights will only be realized when economic and social rights are supported with similar fervor. They grappled with the question of how – and why – the United States should integrate this long-held tradition of ESC rights into domestic and foreign policy.

America’s credibility and authority have been hurt by a lack of respect for ESC rights over the last several years. “Millions upon millions of people are dying of preventable deaths” because we deny health care as a human right, argued panelist Leonard Rubenstein, president of Physicians for Human Rights. And Meg Roggensack, policy director of Free the Slaves, said that by largely ignoring our bedrock obligations to prevent human trafficking and child labor, the United States is losing out on its unique ability to influence policy and prevent such atrocities in nations around the world. Even though these issues require imminent attention internationally, the United States cannot possibly be serious about enabling economic and social rights in its foreign policy if we can’t be serious about them at home, Rubenstein pointed out.

America could take a fundamental step forward by affirming ESC rights in ways that would benefit not only oppressed populations but the American populace. By increasing our capacity to influence issues and areas we care about, Eric Schwartz, executive director of Connect U.S. Fund, argued that America will increase its influence across the world. Since “human rights are the lingua franca of social justice” outside the United States, Ray Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America, said that adopting this framework will allow more constructive dialogue among countries and NGOs.

Acknowledging that ESC rights are fundamentally missing from U.S. dialogue and yet vitally important to both domestic and foreign policy, how can our leaders – especially a new administration – seek to integrate this framework into the current dialogue? Since “investments in some of these areas could make us a more competitive country,” Mr. Offenheiser argued that moving from a discussion about entitlement to one about competitiveness would convince the public.

Similarly, Ms. Roggensack discussed the “freedom dividend,” a payoff that can revitalize poor or struggling economies dealing with issues of slavery. Adding a discussion of moral imperatives to the ESC rights debate has yielded some appealing results and building connections with NGOs that already use a human rights framework has great potential. Economic, social, and cultural rights need to become a central focus of U.S. policy at home and abroad. A bolder, more systemic approach is the best way toward a world where all human rights can flourish.

• Read the full transcript of this panel (pdf)

For more information on this event, please visit the events page.