CUR elevates some fundamental rights over others

Last year, amid much controversy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo established a Commission on Unalienable Rights. On July 16, the CUR issued a draft report and gave two weeks for public comment.

The report should not be approved and released because the entire establishment and procedures of the CUR violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972. Even before reaching the flaws in the draft report itself, the establishment of the CUR violates the strict requirements of federal law for federal advisory commissions, which is why Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the Center for Health and Gender Equality, the Council for Global Equality, and Global Justice Center are suing the State Department to put an end to this illegal effort and misuse of public funds for ideological and partisan purposes.

The CUR was unlawfully formed and has operated illegally from the start. Violating federal transparency law, the commission ignored career diplomats and excluded mainstream human rights groups in favor of members known to be hostile to LGBTQI and reproductive rights, while failing to give proper notice of its meetings and illegally shielding its records from the public.

There was no need to rush the report's release by violating federal notice requirements with only two weeks' notice for public comment and holding a public event at an indoor facility during the time of COVID-19. The city of Philadelphia has asked travelers coming from states with COVID-19 hotspots to quarantine for 14 days -- an impossibility for anyone seeking to attend the launch of the report on such short notice.

The draft report presents a false and historically inaccurate picture of the long-standing approach which the United States has taken, on a bipartisan basis, on the universality of human and civil rights. Despite denials, the CUR makes clear in its report that it would create an illegitimate hierarchy of human rights it deems worthy of protection, with religious freedom and property rights at the top. The CUR report specifically states: "Foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure, from the founders' point of view, are property rights and religious liberty. A political society that destroys the possibility of either loses its legitimacy." Foremost means foremost ("most prominent in rank, importance, or position," "before anything else," "in first place"). Citing a more universal affirmation of human rights in the Vienna Declaration of 1993 cannot obscure the fact that the CUR in fact rejected that formulation in favor of making religious freedom and property rights "foremost" among the panoply of human rights, thereby denigrating other rights. This is obviously intended to provide a patina of State Department approval to legal moves by the Trump Department of Justice to allow religious freedom and property rights to supersede and take precedence over other rights which protect women; racial and religious minorities; marriage equality, and freedom from invidious discrimination.

Secretary Pompeo himself justified the prioritization of certain rights at the expense of others at a press conference releasing the draft report by stating that "more rights does not necessary mean more justice." Indeed, the CUR report itself states, "Transforming every worthy political preference into a claim of human rights inevitably dilutes the authority of human rights." It is shameful to reduce other human rights to mere "political preferences." If there is any doubt on this point, the report explicitly states that while the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "does not explicitly establish a hierarchy of rights," U.S. foreign policy is free to do so. It is appalling that the CUR report refers to "abortion, affirmative action, and same-sex marriage" as "divisive social and political controversies in the United States" -- attempting to differentiate and erase these fundamental human rights and turn back the halting but hopeful progress of the past 244 years.

Ominously, the report argues that countries must have "leeway to base their human rights policy on their own distinctive national traditions." This gives other counties a justification, in the name of the United States of America no less, to abuse their people based on their culture, religion and "distinctive national traditions" (such as oppressing women, children and racial and ethnic minorities), rather than being bound by, and held accountable to, universal human rights. Oh, how foreign despotic dictatorships and authoritarian regimes will celebrate, and cite for decades to come, if this report is approved and becomes the official word of the U.S. government.

By inviting Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, a conservative leader of the Catholic Church, to open the event, it seems, once again, that Secretary Pompeo sees this as a religious rights body, not a human rights commission. Dolan opened with a Christian prayer and repeatedly referred to rights as given by God, rather than inalienable and guaranteed by governments. Apparently the Jeffersonian principle of separation of church and state has no place in Secretary Pompeo's regime of "unalienable rights."

Secretary Pompeo's remarks at the launch were offensive and irresponsible He claimed that "today, the very core of what it means to be an American, indeed the American way of life itself, is under attack." And he complained that "too many leading voices promulgate hatred of our founding principles .... They want you to believe that America's institutions continue to reflect the country's acceptance of slavery at our founding." Is he blind to the ongoing legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination, racism and white supremacy that plagues communities of color to this very minute? Apparently he is because he went out of his way to denigrate the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times 1619 Project that documented, with over 67 separate citations, the ongoing and devastating impact slavery and its cruel progeny have had on Black and brown people in this country.

The CUR and the State Department should disavow Secretary Pompeo's ignorant and shameful remarks and decline to issue any report on the grounds that the commission has been illegally established. In its place, we'll do just fine with the Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 