Sorry State Dept, You Can't Choose Human Rights A La Carte

The Commission on Unalienable Rights was convened by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The commission has championed religious freedom and property as human rights, but not reproductive health, LGBTQ+ wellbeing, immigrant rights, and more. Amanda Klasing, Interim Co-Director at the Women’s Rights Division at the Human Rights Watch and Tarah Demant, Director of Gender, Sexuality, and Identity Program at Amnesty International USA sit down to talk to us about this commission’s most recent report and how it is harmful for global human rights.

This commission ignores 70 years of human rights history and attempts to redefine human rights in a way that is ultimately supported by religious ideology. On August 26, 2020, the commission released its final report that ultimately dismisses, weaponizes, and distorts many human rights, such as abortion and marriage equality. The report also expressly ‘Americanizes’ these human rights in a way which undermines the historical precedent of global cooperation for establishing and maintaining these rights. The separation the U.S. from other countries and the ‘Americanization’ of human rights via this report prevents State Department workers in other countries from being able to work efficiently on behalf of the United States. It also allows for countries that are hostile to certain human rights to not be held accountable, with many countries already seeking to copy the U.S.’ current example.

The commission’s emphasis on freedom of religion must be taken into account; while freedom to practice religion is a human right, religious beliefs cannot be used to minimize the rights of women, LGBTQ+ folks, those seeking sexual and reproductive health care, immigrants, and more.

Links from this episode

Human Rights Watch on Facebook
Human Rights Watch on Twitter
Amnesty International on Facebook
Amnesty International on Twitter
Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights

Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to RePROs Fight Back, a podcast where we explore all things reproductive health, rights and justice. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and I'll be helping you stay informed around issues like birth control, abortion, sex education and LGBTQ issues and much, much more-- giving you the tools you need to take action and fight back. Okay, let's dive in.

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Jennie: Welcome to this week's episode of RePROs Fight Back. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter, and my preferred pronouns are she/her. I don't know about y'all, but there is so much going on right now and it is leaving me exhausted. I am not sleeping great either, so that's definitely not helping. And when I am, I've been having really bad stress dreams, which are super not helpful. So I was lucky enough that I was able to take a day last week for a mental health day. I'm really grateful that my office lets us do things like that. I know not everybody is privileged enough to do that. It was nice to have the day to just get away from everything. Unfortunately, it didn't help me sleep that night, but that's okay. So, I just hope with all of the things and this constant bombardment of so much news right now that everybody is doing what they are able to do to take care of themselves. I know I'm trying to do my best as well. I'm just going to keep the intro short today because we have kind of a long episode. It's a good episode, but it's a little long. So, I just wanted to do a little bit of housekeeping. And I know on our bonus episode, I talked about that, we have an episode that comes out on election day and asking y'all what you would like us to do for that episode. So, I gave two options and one is that we do a repeat of our annual SRHR hero origin stories, where I have people come on and tell the story about how they ended up working in reproductive health, rights and justice. So right now, that one is definitely in the lead. So, if you're interested, make sure to let us know. And two, the other option was an ask me anything style episode where we do some sort of fun ask me anything with me. So those are my ideas. I'm also open to other suggestions. If you have a better idea, please let us know-- I'm open to whatever. So what we're going to do is if you want to reach out to us on social media at reprosfightback on Facebook and Twitter, reprosFB on Instagram, and let us know what you think. We'll have polls in all of those places so that you can vote and let us know which one you're leaning towards, the SRHR hero origin stories or an ask me anything. We'll do whatever y'all decide on. And otherwise you can email me at jennie@reprosfightback.com and we'll go from there. So with that, let's turn to this week's episode. Like I said, it's a little long, but it's really good. I had a great conversation with Tara Demant at Amnesty International and Amanda Klasing at Human Rights Watch. And we talked all about what is happening with the Commission on Unalienable Rights. So just a little flag for y'all. There was a little bit of a glitch with Tara's audio towards the end, since we're still in COVID times, still recording from home. So just bear with us for the audio is not as good as it would be. If we were recording in person, it's mostly fine throughout the entire episode, just towards the end, it gets a little wonky. So sorry for that. I didn't want to cut out what she was saying, cause it was really important and really good. So, I hope you all enjoy my interview with Amanda and Tarah. Hi, Amanda and Tarah. Thank you so much for being here.

Amanda and Tarah: Thanks for having us really happy to be here.

Jennie: So let's take a quick second and have both of you introduce yourselves. Why don't you start Amanda?

Amanda: Sure. Thanks so much for having us today. My name is Amanda Klasing. My pronouns are she/her/hers and I am the Interim Co-Director of the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.

Tarah: And I'm Tarah Demant. My pronouns are she/her/hers and I'm the Director of the Gender, Sexuality and Identity program at Amnesty International USA.

Jennie: I am… okay, excited is not the right word, but energized. And maybe enraged to talk about the Commission on Unalienable Rights with you two again, maybe we should start at the very beginning in case people didn't listen to that episode and just talk about real briefly what is the Commission on Unalienable Rights?

Amanda: Well, it is a commission that Secretary Pompeo convened-- I say it and it makes me giggle a little bit-- under something called FACA. It's a legislative vehicle in which he can actually convene a commission of experts and they're supposed to have diverse points of view to look into an issue. And he wanted them to look at what are the human rights issues that U.S. foreign policy should take on. When you dug into what he had to say, it was really how do we pick and choose those rights that we like that most support the types of people that we're comfortable supporting? It was an opportunity to reevaluate rights away from the protections and the expansions that we have seen over the last several decades in interpretations of human rights that should exist for all people.

Tarah: At its most basic, these commissions, whatever the topic they're on are supposed to be opportunities for a diverse panel of experts to come in and really think critically about issues that impact U.S. foreign policy in this case, human rights. The idea of that is that we're constantly as a government reengaging with complicated, complex issues. I think it's really important. And Amanda, you alluded to this. So from the beginning, this was very clearly not the intent of this panel. It was not an honest engagement in the ongoing growing conversation around human rights and how we look at complex human rights issues and deal with them complexly as the State Department, which is the foreign relations wing of the U.S. government. And that first of all, it's a violation of FACA. So right from the beginning, this has been a really problematic process, even by Secretary Pompeo's own processes on the lease by the human rights ideals, by which they're supposed to meet. This was not a diverse group of panelists. This was a group of panelists whose political intentions have been exceedingly clear throughout their careers. These are folks who have worked very hard to rewrite a narrative of human rights, which is pretty exclusionary. And from a very specific religious ideology, you had folks on the panel, who'd worked for the Vatican. You had folks on the panel, who've been arguing the right for religious exclusion in terms of non-discrimination. There were very clear ideologies at work here and the panel was that it wasn't a sort of diverse interests that could really hash these out among intelligent people who might disagree with interpretations. That from the very beginning was very clear. And as Amanda mentioned, what then happened instead of this, what could have been a, ‘Hey, how are we really engaging as the U.S. government on evolving human rights issues’ where it was instead, was a real regression, which was how can we, as the United States, opt out of human rights that this specific religious ideology doesn't like, and those are not going to surprise your listeners at all, whether or not they listened to that first episode, which is sexual reproductive health and rights, which is the rights of LGBTQI people, which is women's rights, which is the rights of minorities… the right that this administration has not only not championed, but has been in a full out, aggressive attack on those were the rights that the commission decided surprisingly, --of course not at al--l that weren't actually really human rights. That's what any of those panels in theory is just this sort of vehicle by which the State Department can reevaluate and think about things complexly. And in reality, it was a political maneuver for the U.S. to try to unilaterally redefine human rights, to fit a very specific political and religious agenda.

Amanda: Just to say before the panelists were even impaneled or the commissioners were even impaneled, human rights groups were raising concerns because we know what human rights are. There is an international human rights legal regime with binding treaties, many of which the United States has ratified and others that are signed, but not ratified. And then there are actually human rights treaty bodies that are tasked with interpretation of those treaties and monitoring whether or not states are acting consistently with our obligations. And so, it already, without there being any commissioner in place raised our significant concern, which only unfolded as the commission started on its work.

Jennie: So I guess with all of these concerns, I can only assume that they came out with a really great report robustly in support of human rights and really just full throated defense of everything we believe in.

Tarah: Absolutely. And then I wrote my unicorn over the rainbow bridge to make cookies all day long. No, I mean, again, not surprising, there was again, but the rules and regulations by which we govern ourselves or what we agree to as a society to keep functioning. So again, in total violations of the rules of doing this with multiple closed door sessions and they had to be, there's an ongoing lawsuit happening, a FACA-based lawsuit that the panels, not only were they not constituted in a legal way, that they didn't meet the legal requirements of sharing out their meetings and having feedback, et cetera. So again, through that non legitimate process already, the conclusions they came to were the predetermined ones that we knew that they would come to, which is a rarefication of human rights. Secretary Pompeo, and not only through this process, but in multiple speeches has often talked about the proliferation of rights as the sort of dangerous thing that really challenges human rights. And I mean, it's important to really reiterate what Amanda said, which is there is not broad confusion around human rights globally or in the U.S.-- there's not a confusion around whether or not non-discrimination applies to LGBTQ people. There is not political will to make that happen in some places, including in the United States, but that's different than a confusion as to whether or not it should be happening under international human rights, law, treaties and agreements. And what this commission then did was put out a report in which they championed what they called “unalienable rights”. And those were rights to religion and right to property. So religion and property were really the uplifted unalienable rights.

Amanda: And really there was an effort to ground the discussion in something called the universal declaration for human rights, which let's all be clear, it was an important moment to have countries come together after World War II at the founding of the United Nations to identify and declare jointly what are human rights issues. And this is a founding document of the human rights movement been for sure, it is not binding. What happened after the universal declaration was adopted is that states got to work and they started to actually negotiate and think through and put together binding documents. Then countries would ratify and incorporate into their actual domestic law. And this project really ignores that element of the human rights framework and focuses on this universal declaration and tries to unpack for itself kind of independent of the rest of the 70 years of history, what that universal declaration means. And as Tara suggested, it means that they took this narrow view that doesn't incorporate the gains that people have made to have greater protection under the broader human rights movement. But the report, if you read, it feels innocuous. You don't quite understand that that is what is happening when it's so carefully worded, but there are certain things like dismissing abortion as a political issue that has a lot of debate rather than a human rights issue that has been clearly found to violate a host of human rights and that governments have an obligation to if those restrictions, and that's been dismissed as a political issue, the same with marriage equality. And so there's something very insidious about the report, because if you pick it up, it doesn't scream to you “This is discriminatory!” it feels legalistically historical and grounded in this movement, but it is dismissive of the hard work of the human rights activism and the human rights mechanisms and the 70 years since the declaration was adopted.

Tarah: Yeah. And what I might add there Amanda is I think it willfully distorts the UDHR, right? Not only does it ignore the UDHR which is the universal declaration of human rights is that grounding of universal rights, which we've spent the last 70 years defining, right. It's absolutely ignored 70 year’s worth of defining what that means, how we understand what the right to life means, how we understand what the right to freedom of speech means. How do we understand what the right to freely associate means? That's what the last work of the 70 years has been, but it willfully distorts the document itself. Then it uses it as a weapon instead of a shield. So, for example, freedom to practice your religion is in the universal declaration of human rights. And that's a right that, of course has been in the last 70 years, we define more and we help people understand what this means for a government to really abide by this right, to protect it, to respect it and to fulfill that right for people. But it takes this document. And instead then says like, ah, well, I'm going to take this wording here and then I'm going to U.S. it, Americanize it. And that's another thing that's really dangerous about this 1) that really, really distorts the universal declaration of human rights and uses it as a weapon against people, as opposed to, as a baseline for protection. But it also does this arguing that we have to Americanize global understandings of human rights. So, in that report, which, you know, I don't know if you're like really, really bored, maybe pick it up and read, but it's interesting in the sense that it's a really interesting way to go about dismantling human rights. It roots itself in the idea that we need to Americanize our understanding of these things. So, in addition to the universal declaration of human rights, it obviously frequently mentions the constitution. The commission itself sort of thought about the rights of man, the documents, which are just sort of weird, they're picking and choosing as to what documents of course made the American cut, but also defined our approaches. And that is also extremely dangerous in this endeavor, which is to say, well, we spent these 70 years and with UDHR itself in global agreement, making these decisions together and moving as a global community. But now what we're going to do is say that countries should do their own thing. We're going to Americanize this and Brazil should Brazilize it, and whatever else should do their work on it, which absolutely dismantles the whole idea of international agreement and multilateral spaces. If at the end of the day, we've all made agreements together as countries and the U.S. has been part of those hard debates. And those long--this is why it takes so long to change at the UN level is because you are dealing with a hundred plus governing bodies and people who have very different interests or different backgrounds and understandings and cultural ideologies coming together to say, no, no we're agreeing together. And now the U.S. is saying, no human rights needs to be based on our religious interpretation of specific American documents. That's bananas. First of all, the American documents themselves that they're somehow infallible human rights defenses are insane. That's not true of any America's founding documents, but even if it were, which again, it's not, we are in a global community making global decisions. And to then use this process to say, not only are we going to exclude LGBTQ people, not only are we going to really mitigate the rights of women and sexual and reproductive health and rights, we're going to absolutely unravel the idea of what it means to be in global community with human rights.

Amanda: Yeah. And I would just say, just a quick thought. It's actually the Declaration of Independence that they really dug into. They mentioned briefly the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but they similarly to the universal declaration and then ignoring of the proliferation of the actual documents that came to actually help implement what is in the declaration. It's the Declaration of Independence that they refer to as a founding document without really recognizing what comes after, which is a country trying to grapple with what are the core ideals that are articulated there and how do we actually make that come to fruition and practice? So, everything from the civil rights acts of the 1960s to the ADA laws, to laws around pregnancy discrimination, and they don't even really engage with that. And so, it's this real simple look at... it's like originalism and its worst possible form. I encourage listeners to actually go and look at the PDF version of the report because just from a visual perspective, the photos that they choose to include into the report signal, whose rights they're choosing to center. And what's interesting is it tells you a little something about the perspective of the commission that no one thought to visually represent themselves in a way that is more inclusive, which seems to me, if not negligent is certainly something more. And so, I just really, I think when people say who they are believe them, and when you publish something and you put visual representation of what it is, believe it. And just to say, a spoiler alert, a lot of white men, founding fathers, and it ends with a group of white American children holding the universal declaration. It doesn’t represent as Tarah suggests, that human rights are a communion of nations saying that they will not treat their citizens in a certain way, and that is not reflected in even the visual representation of this report.

Jennie: So I think we've already started to touch on this, but why is this problematic? It seems kind of obvious—we can’t have the U.S. version of human rights, the Brazil version, the Saudi Arabian version…But maybe dig into that a little bit. Why would that be a problem?

Tarah: There's so many things that are both literally and figuratively on fire right now that it can be hard to explain why a sort of obscure commission that maybe folks haven't heard about and a document that you may or may not read matters, but it really does matter. And it has direct impact on people's lives. So the first thing is that, so the State Department right is, as folks know, is the main vehicle by which the U.S. does foreign relations work. So, when we're talking with other countries, when we're engaged in diplomacy, the State Department is the driver of that. And what the Secretary Pompeo has done is sent out to the State Department, this report. And so this is what should be guiding you. You should be uplifting this, and this is what should be guiding you. So it has gone out as a dictate that these are the standards by which the United States roots itself and what the United States is saying is human rights. Well, then, why does that matter? Then you say you're a State Department worker and you're doing this work somewhere. Let's say you're a State Department worker and you're in a country where homosexuality is criminalized and embassies have played many roles for good and for ill in terms of human rights, but one of the roles that they've played with civil society in places where, for example-- being LGBTQ is criminalized, and mainly it's usually being a gay male is criminalized, but then by association, sort of all other queer identified body-- is that they help civil society engage in the work of trying to change those laws, right, or engage in the work of advocating for their rights. And that might be through helping host round tables. It might be through informal conversations and assistance. It might be through implementing a specific U.S. project that is based on bringing civil society members together, including LGBTQI folk. So you're in a place in which if you're in a State Department role in a country where that's criminalized, and now you get this guidance from the State Department that says, “Hey, these rights are human rights. And that's the right to religion and property and things like abortion and same sex marriage, those are political controversy.” And the document specifically narrows those out and says “those are political controversies and issues like that, we all may be just disagreeing on, but these human rights of property and religion, those are human rights.” What are you supposed to do with that guidance when you're on the ground, making decisions about what you can and can't do on behalf of the U.S. government, the support that you can and can't give, that has real implications for the role that the U.S. government has played in other governments and in helping civil society people, it puts people at risk who have depended on the U.S. as a mechanism or as a lever, or even as a shadow of consequence, if something is to happen. This is not an anomaly that this president has been extremely hostile to LGBTQ people and to sexual and reproductive rights. But now there's an official statement that that is the position of the U.S. So what does that also then tell you if you're a country who is interested in further criminalizing LGBTQ people, or who is interested in further criminalizing abortion and violating rights, and before the idea as the deterrent, is that your friends or people who will help hold you accountable, like the United States are going to them at the very least bristle at that. And hopefully negotiate those things with you about how that's a bad idea, or there will be consequences for those types of ideas. So, you're looking at this and thinking like the United States has clearly said, what it is prioritizing and not prioritizing. And the third thing is that other countries have already started looking at this process to do them themselves. There were countries at these commission hearings through their embassy staff who were there literally taking notes as to how to replicate this process in their own country, so that you have a country that is more hostile to human rights than looking at a way that it can quote unquote legitimize being an anti-human rights country. And that's what this process is. It's trying to legitimize human rights violation. And that is a process which other countries certainly have done it without the U.S. example, but in this way, which has this veneer a respectability using the veneer of human rights language, and document to try and make a respectable process out of stripping rights away from people. And so we're likely to see that in other places, and we have seen it being duplicated, this exact type of process.

Amanda: I would just say there is a significantly challenging environment for human rights globally. The human rights project, the movement is at risk. We're not in a situation where we feel like rights are over protected, that people are overly exercising their human rights. And the idea that the challenge to human rights is that it is too inclusive and that it is too affective to extend to all people is not the problem that we see. The challenge to human rights is that there is a real rise in authoritarianism. There's a real rise and a rejection of the human rights mechanisms and the human rights oversight that the framework provides for citizens all around the world. And if the United States wants to play a role in supporting and propping up a human rights movement in crisis, and at risk further de-legitimizing the project doesn't help it. Suggesting to governments that they can choose which rights are more reflective of their domestic tradition does not help further the rights movement in any way. It allows countries to turn inward and externally identify those rights that it is doing well and ignore all the others. And it allows the U.S. to get off as well, unexamined for its rights violations, the whole hope of human rights and the promise of human rights is that governments are making a commitment to human rights obligations. They're making a commitment to open up their record to an international process and where they fall short listening to mechanisms that tell them where they fall short and what to do better. It gives an avenue and vehicle by which rights activists can petition an external actor and say, this is not working. And they are not upholding their obligations. Those are for the U.S. to sideline that it's deeply destructive to an already very stressed system. And as Tarah said, other governments are paying attention. They likewise want to be able to pick and choose which rights matter to them. And they want to be able to claim that they have a domestic tradition that allows them to implement a hierarchy of rights. That then lets them go about discriminating against marginalized populations, not allowing people to organize or raise their voices or whatever the host of rights violations they want to get away with. So, it's not an obscure document that some academics put together. It is something that the U.S. is so jazzed about that they're taking it and shopping it around. They have translated it into many languages. They've taken it to the UN general assembly. There was going to be an event focused on it. There was a lot of pushback. And so instead, they've asked for a recommitment to the universal declaration of human rights and ask governments to sign up and sign onto this recommitment. And so just this week, instead of having that focus solely on the commission, they had it more broadly on the universal declaration, but really it was to push the objectives of this report. And if you look at the signatories to the recommitment, to the UDHR, it is not a who's who of human rights supporters and champions. It is instead a reflection of how marginalized this process is from mainstream understandings of human rights.

Jennie: I think you started to get into what was going to be my next question, which was Pompeo started this whole process, but we haven't really talked about him very much. So, what has Secretary Pompeo been doing recently?

Amanda: One of the things that's so interesting, we started with this secure regulatory FACA commission. This is what the commission is. And the idea is that it's submitting a report. It's a study that experts have put together. And yet at the launch of this report, Pompeo played a very significant role in launching the report and articulating as if it had become policy. And so there is this big difference between this independent commission and then adoption of policy. And so Pompeo has really accepted the outcomes of this commission. And as Tarah said, made clear that this is the interpretation of human rights that should be informed through the commission. He also just to give a reflection of where his thinking is on what are the unalienable rights, he gave a sermon recently at a very large church outside of Dallas, where he talked about his rights agenda and his agenda for foreign policy. And I think that really reinforces this interweaving of religious liberties agenda with a pivot away from human rights principles that are clearly articulated in a legal regime that we have signed on to. And I want to be careful about that because obviously there is important space within human rights for the exercise of religion. But it's interesting that when the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch Ken Roth actually testified in front of the commission when he dug into the difference between the UDHR and some of these binding treaty bodies. One of the key points of debate among the commissioners was how do you interpret the freedom of religion and religious exercise? The freedom tp exercise religion based on the UDHR versus the covenant on civil and political rights and what it says very clearly om the covenant of civil and political rights is that it creates this balancing act that allows for states to protect people's whose rights might be violated while people are able to still exercise their religion. And we're seeing this real interweaving in the direction of prioritizing religious rights over everything else. And Pompeo shows us that and showing up as a sitting head of state and delivering a sermon on foreign policy at a church.

Tarah: Let's be really clear what Secretary Pompeo means by religious rights. In this agenda for religious rights, everyone has the right to practice their religion without interference from the state and without persecution. Again, there's not confusion about that. And then violate that right. There are consequences and they are in violation of their agreement. What Secretary Pompeo and folks in this room mean with quote unquote, religious rights movement is the right to impose their religion on other people. And I think it's really, really important to think when they say religious, right? They don't actually mean the right to religion. They don't mean the right, that we've agreed upon or reasonable, right? What they mean and are implementing extremely clearly without pretense for not pretending it’s something else is imposing a specific religious view through the government. So for example, one example, it's easy to think about, cause we've seen it in the United States is if you are a pharmacist and your religion says that birth control is unethical, you get to believe that, the government can't tell you not to believe that that's the whole point of the right to practice your religion. What you don't get to do is impose your religious restriction on someone else. So that if a young woman comes in for her birth control prescription to be filled, you can't say, no, you shouldn't just have birth control cause I believe it's wrong. Like you believe it's wrong all day long. You don't get to impose that belief on someone else, or you don't get to refuse to serve someone because they're gay. You don't get to do that the same way you don't get to sue someone because they're black. Your religion is racist. You get to believe that no matter how troubling, I might personally find that, but you don't get to impose those beliefs on other people and you don't get to impose them through the government. And this commission and Secretary Pompeo specifically, and a number of people in the U.S. government appointed by Trump have made very, very clear that the goal here is a very specific right-wing understanding of evangelical Christianity that then should be in their view implemented. Right? And that, I think it's so important because they've absconded the language of rights. Just be like, my rights are under attack as a Christian. And there's no documented evidence that these are attacks, but what they mean is that I can't then impose this view in the ways I'd like to impose it. I think the abortion is morally wrong. Therefore, I think no one else should get to do this. I think that people shouldn't have sex before marriage… And it's not a homogeneous group of people. People have beliefs all over a spectrum here. Those are examples of beliefs that could be imposed on people through the government. So has access to abortion. What are not discrimination clauses. And those are the examples that we've seen try to be implemented already through the government through numerous ways and agencies and through Secretary Pompeo's own language. Some of it as Amanda pointed out, it gets up to state and the Secretary of State to go and give a religious sermon on U.S. foreign policy. But we're not even hiding at this point the agenda of Secretary Pompeo, which is to impose a very specific religious ideology. The others are telling people about LGBT rights or political controversies, whereas the right to property, which again is interpreted to that document. Wanting to dictate what other people can and can't do is the reason we have human rights document because the predilections of government will come and go. You won't always have a government who thinks that women should control their bodies or work. We didn't have a government that thought women should have credit cards in their own names until it was argued in front of the Supreme Court. We will have governments who in our country as well as others, who are on various places on that spectrum, let's say I'm respecting rights. And the reason we have these rights is for the protection of, no, no, just because you personally don't believe this thing, doesn’t mean you get that way from other people. You too are protected under these rights, you to can have these beliefs and the government can't impose the different beliefs on you no matter how much you might think you are, but that also goes, you don't get to impose a religion. And that's what we're seeing. That is what's being implemented and it's not, they're not hiding it. It's not disagreeing. Right? You have people who are highly considered contenders for the Supreme Court seat saying that they want to bring God's kingdom to earth through the court. That's a really specific goal. Again, human rights say you can't include specific religious beliefs. That's not the role of human rights. And that's what we're seeing with secretary Pompeo and this commission too. It's one of the many, many mechanisms that this administration has used to try and impose a very specific art, right? Ideology of religion, and strip back protections for very specific people.

Amanda: And just to say, you look at the persecution of people for practicing their religion. And they're really significant issues that need to be addressed globally…you see that it is not wrong to identify and really pursue a foreign policy that looks at religious persecution. But again, addressing in the human rights issues around freedom to exercise religion, doesn't permit, open discrimination against women and girls and LGBT and other queer identifying individuals. This is not an either-or prospect and we haven't even started to kind of touch on this other part of the rights agenda that seems to be dismissed out of hand by the commission and that’s that globally. most people understand human rights to include economic and social rights issues as well. They take it to include the right to help and the right to water and the right to food, the right to education. And it is a particularly American view to not recognize those things as a human right. And the commission fails to really engage on this issue except to say that the U.S. should engage on these social problems like water and sanitation, and really reinforces this idea of charity and beneficiaries and exporting frankly, a white savior attitude for our foreign assistance, rather than centering people as rights holders that should, and be able to demand from their countries fundamental human rights. And that the United States has an obligation to support countries in realizing those rights. And so everything else aside, there's also just a complete dismissal of half of the human rights that most people recognize as fundamental. And they've very cleanly set that to a side, even though those were rights in the universal declaration of human rights. And so picking and choosing rights and prioritizing the universal declaration is still a myopic view of very American approach to human rights.

Tarah: Yeah, that's exactly right. Those are very conveniently ignored in their quote unquote commitment to the UDHR…

Jennie: Okay. I could talk to you all forever about this, but I want to be respectful of your time because I know we're all busy with meetings and such. So, let's end with not as dark of place hopefully. And what can listeners do? What actions can people take right now in response to all of this stuff.

Amanda: One of the things that is important as the members of Congress have tried to play an oversight role and try to in limited success, but encouraging a member of Congress to continue to put pressure on the state department, to not follow this as a line of policy and to ask questions about the legitimacy of the commission, which is currently in litigation, there's also, there's legislation on the Reproductive Rights are Human Rights Act that it's supposed to be inn the House and the Senate. But if your member of Congress has not signed on to that, they should, it's a recognition that in fact reproductive rights are human rights. This is not the only place that Pompeo’s State Department has tried to erase the clear articulation of the protection of reproductive rights under international law. They've done so, in the annual reporting on human rights globally, I would encourage people to push their members of Congress to support that. And I also think that there's a real fear among people like Pompeo that American citizens and people that live in the United States will find the power of human rights across human rights issues and leverage them in the same way that movements globally have. And that's including around issues that the U.S. government, regardless of administration has said, aren't human rights. So the right of health, as I said, or education or water and sanitation or food, housing, all of the issues that right now are most at risk under this global pandemic and economic crisis. And so I think mobilize, really start to see the power and strength of a justice agenda that includes human rights. And so I encourage people to read and use the universal declaration of human rights, but also the successor rights documents and their own advocacy, and really claim the power of those instruments.

Tarah: Those are all really fantastic suggestions Amanda. I would double down on encouraging, where, there are legislative vehicles, which are trying to commit the U.S. to human rights standards that have not wanted to commit to previously. And I think that having folks get involved in those bills and contacting your representatives, and there has been congressional pushback. I think it matters it hasn't stopped the vehicle, but it's really slowed down some of the foreign momentum of it when Congress is doing oversight role. So if this is the first time you're hearing about it, just contact your representative and ask them if they've signed on to those letters that have raised concern. And if not, why not? You want to know. I think the other thing that folks can do more generally, is to think about the ways that we are a global nation and all nations are global nations. But I think as Americans, we have often maybe I'm just thinking about myself here, just a little bit of processing therapy, but we tend to think that ourselves to be exceptionally in our national identity, partly because global consequences have looked different to us. They have looked as a different thing than they have to other countries. I think, as that has changed and recognizing our role globally and why these global agreements matter and why it matters not just that we have a Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and constitutional law. And all those things really matter, are the rights you have as an American, but also these global documents, which really shaped the way we exist in a global world. And the way that our colleagues keep us accountable. Amanda had said there are mechanisms by which when the United States has violated its obligations to human rights, other countries can call them to account through these treaty bodies and through these periodic reviews. And it's uncomfortable. We both sat in those before and watched the United States government really physically squirm when someone else is saying, well, if you signed the convention against torture, so why aren't you letting conversion therapy happen? Which is so clearly an extension of that, that has mattered. And that has had impact on people's lives. And the U.S. government has had to either defend something that they knew was indefensible or to try and make the changes that would ease up that critique. And so, seeing those slow changes, seeing those as ways in which we're a global player and understanding the ideals that we hold, fairness or human rights to talk around it like American and democracy, those are universal ideas. And we share these with lots of people. So really seeing our role in that in a larger way, obviously, if we can connect with those great, but also just seeing the work you do as a local person in your very local community…rooting yourself in broader understanding, I think is helpful because it helps educate others too. It's the importance of those larger ideals, which in many ways are reflected in a lot of America's documents and are not reflected in a lot of America's actions. And so that is something that we need to keep doing specifically, as Americans is thinking about that more broadly and bringing that conversation into the conversations you're having about what is right and wrong and adjust the conversations you're having.

Amanda: Just to give a great example of what this looks like in practice is the UN Human rRghts Council passed a unanimous resolution that the UN high commissioner for human rights needed to do a global investigation on systemic racism and policing and excessive use of force against people of African descent with a specific focus on the death of George Floyd and really putting a global focus on the discrimination and systemic racism that exists in the United States. And there is power in having the global community locally, the United States and have it have to really grapple with the human rights abuses that continue to exist in our own country and where there hasn't been reparation or remedy and anything that the U.S does externally or globally to weaken these mechanisms ultimately harm the human rights global citizens, but of the U.S. as well.

Tarah: And every time we as individuals are listeners. And when you're taking action, knowing that you are part of that community, doing that, as we are all individually and together as a group, as you're listening on the podcast and other folks, when you're engaged in that local work, like you are part of that global struggle for justice. I do think that anyone else in this world is looking for some comfort right now. I find comfort in that. And I find resolve in that. I think it's very hard for folks to feel hopeful, obviously, even sitting there so dark and so tough, but they can find resolve in that and working for it together. So whether or not you end up being like a minute, absolutely read all the treaties you belong to. And I'm going to try and incorporate this language into my every day… please do because it actually really does matter. But when you go and you fight people in your community, when you go and you fight to impose restrictions on sexual reproductive rights and you go and you fight to make sure people have the right to housing, that is part of the tradition of human rights. And it is brought to you by human rights language. It is brought to you by people agreeing together. Those are rights we should all have, which was brought by the people doing the work. It is a system which is all connected. And so I would just encourage all of us to see ourselves as responsible for that work…these treaties documents came because on the ground, people were doing the work and forcing governments to recognize them and to keep doing that work in whatever focus area you're most passionate about and just keep showing up. The other thing that's just commissioned and all the other mechanisms this administration is used is they're very specifically meant to wear us all down, attacks from every side. And that's the point. They couldn't get something past Congress so they're going to use an obscure commission. They're going to do this. They're going to do that. It's supposed to vary too, that you get this sort of existential exhaustion and also just physical exhaustion. So all those examples Amanda gave are great points that you are just, if you’ve got nothing to do look up the Global HER Act, look up whether or not your Congress person has signed on to these letters, et cetera. But the things that you're already doing, keep doing that, take a breath, take a moment for yourself and then keep plugging along because nothing's going to bring commissions like this to the garbage can where they belong, that's, what's kind of bringing continue to move us forward to a better place where those human rights are not only just enshrined in U.S. documents instead of attack, but then also actually implement it in the United States and in our own communities as well.

Jennie: Well, Tarah, Amanda, thank you so much for doing this today. It was great to talk to you.

Amanda: Thank you. Really appreciate it. Always a pleasure.

Tarah: Yeah. Thank you so much.

Jennie: Thanks for listening everyone. And we'll see you on our next episode of RePROS Fight Back. For more information, including show notes from this episode and previous episodes, please visit our website at reprosfightback.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at RePROS Fight Back, or on Instagram at reprosfb. If you like our show, please help others find it by sharing it with your friends and subscribing, rating and reviewing us on iTunes. Thanks for listening.

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