The following "Let Justice Flow" column by Bill Schulz was originally published in the Winter/Spring 2013 issue of Rights Now, UUSC's semiannual newsletter. 

We have recently been through an election in this country in which young voters played an important role in the victories of progressive candidates, the growth in women officeholders, and the changes in norms indicated by increased support for marriage equality. As is true almost everywhere, youth are signaling the shape of our future society.

I teach a course in human rights every January at New York University. I love doing that not only because it provides me contact with some of the brightest young people of the new generation but also because it reminds me that all things are possible. My students are not jaded or cynical; most of them are founts of innovative ideas and unstaunched ambition. They are not afraid of testing "crazy" theories or challenging common assumptions.

That's why youth are so often the drivers of social change around the world, and since UUSC is bent on finding the most innovative, entrepreneurial approaches to the world's problems, it's also why we so often end up working with youth — in Haiti, Egypt, Kenya, and elsewhere. The new issue of Rights Now focuses in part on just that kind of work.

Nor do we forget that our own Unitarian Universalist youth can provide unlimited enthusiasm for social justice. The UU College of Social Justice, profiled in the new issue, is UUSC and the UUA's vehicle for tapping into that energy.

Young people are making a new world. UUSC is committed to seeing that it is a just world. The combination is exceptional!

With the holidays behind us, I finally have time to report a bit on my recent trip to Kenya for UUSC in which we visited four partner groups: the Kakamega Grassroots Initiative, the SoilFarm Multi-Culture Group (which runs the renowned Hope in Crops program), the Kenya National Alliance of Street Vendors and Informal Traders (KENASVIT), and Rock Women.

We met with leaders of Kenyan civil society concerning the recently adopted new constitution and the upcoming April national elections. I delivered a lecture on human rights and terrorism at the University of Nairobi. And Martha Thompson, manager of UUSC's Rights in Humanitarian Crises Program, and I even managed to slip in a visit to Karen Blixen's home at the foot of the Ngong Hills made famous in Out of Africa.

The breadth of impact we and our Kenyan partner groups are having is remarkable. The Kakamega Grassroots Initiative (KGI), for example, is supporting women widowed and displaced by the 2007 election-related violence, offering them trauma support and seeding their small businesses. With another election on the horizon, KGI is similarly investing in and training youth to run their own small market businesses on the theory that, since young people are often bribed to cause tribal mayhem in marketplaces in connection with elections, they will be less motivated to do so if they have businesses of their own that would be vulnerable to disruption in the event of violence.

Or take KENASVIT, which UUSC helped launch a number of years ago. The "informal sector" accounts for an astonishing 80 percent of Kenya's gross domestic product, but before KENASVIT came into existence, street vendors and hawkers were utterly at the mercy of the authorities who often had little sympathy for their needs. Beginning with 200 vendors, KENASVIT has grown to represent 15,000, winning numerous concessions regarding such things as working conditions, harassment by police, basic sanitation, etc.

And this is to say nothing about the SoilFarm Multi-Culture Group's planting of 80,000 trees, including in schools where they serve to educate the students about the value of rain forest and counter the illegal harvesting of trees in the Kakamega National Forest. And there is also Rock Women's efforts to end trafficking of girls or stop discrimination against Somali refugees whom the authorities stereotypically assume, given the conflict between Kenya and Somalia, are active in the al Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab.

A rewarding, if exhausting trip — but one that made me even prouder to be part of UUSC!

UUSC joins UUA President Peter Morales and all Unitarian Universalists in mourning the senseless deaths in Connecticut. I was in Kenya when the shootings occurred and was moved by the outpouring of shock and sympathy from around the world. How many more innocent people must die before we adopt sensible controls on weapons? Whether they would have prevented this tragedy or not, they will surely save uncountable numbers of lives.

I'd also like to share the statement released by UUA President Peter Morales:

I am shocked and profoundly saddened by the news of the massacre at a school in Newtown, Connecticut. My deepest condolences go out to the families and friends of those who lost their lives today. I know of nothing more tragic than a young life cut short by violence. This is a time for embracing one another and helping each other find strength and solace.

This is just the latest horrific act of gun violence targeting innocent lives. Whether it's the mall shooting in Oregon or the mass murders in Aurora, Colorado or the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tucson, Arizona or the Columbine school killings, these instances of violence continue to erupt in America. It is an additional tragedy that today's killings occurred in an elementary school where our youngest and most vulnerable spend their day. All Americans must reflect humbly and work to change the conditions that allow such violence to take place.

We must rededicate ourselves to creating a society where differences are resolved without violence, where the mentally unstable do not have ready access to lethal force, where violence is not glorified, and where we can live, love, and work in safe places. Our task as a religious people committed to compassion and to peace is to show a better way.

By William F. Schulz | Read it on HuffingtonPost.com

"Everyone is sick and tired of this issue of human rights," Dmitri Peskov, Vladimir Putin's press secretary, said recently. "It's boringly traditional, boringly traditional, and it's not on the agenda." When I read those words, I knew human rights were here to stay. What a perfect testament to the power of democratic values that now, rather than being denounced as radical outliers, they are dismissed as too mainstream, yesterday's news. 

Of course if human rights had indeed lost their potency in Russia, it is unlikely that the government would have felt the need to pass legislation several months ago requiring nonprofit groups that receive financing from the West to identify themselves as "foreign agents." Such a moniker would taint the work of Russian human rights groups like Memorial and For Human Rights — made up entirely, let it be noted, of native Russians — and render them ineffectual. If human rights were really of so little interest to Russian citizens, so boring, one presumes they would wither of their own accord. Surely Mr. Peskov doth protest too much.

In one sense, however, he is right. As we mark Human Rights Day on December 10, the 64th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), it is fair to say that the fundamental values reflected in that document — free speech, competitive elections, rights to food, education, etc. — have indeed become "traditional" in the sense that nations that flagrantly violate them risk international opprobrium.

But if human rights provide norms by which to identify respectable societies, they are not static or unbending. Human rights advocates cannot afford to adopt a version of Justice Antonin Scalia's Constitutional "originalism" when it comes to the UDHR. Here are three examples of modern-day challenges that the human rights movement has yet to fully resolve:

• The challenge of sectarian government. Article 18 of the UDHR assures us that "everyone has the right to freedom of . . . religion." Discrimination against those of minority faiths is clearly not permitted. But to what extent may a constitution be grounded in sectarian values? The issue is met most dramatically today around Islamic states but applies as well to governing documents grounded in many other faiths, not least Christianity and Judaism.

• The challenge of cyberspace. The UDHR was conceived in an era of postal stamps and telegrams. Where privacy ends and legitimate government interests begin fall well outside its contemplation. Governments certainly may not use new technologies to stifle legitimate dissent but in an age of Wikileaks and cyber warfare, clarity around personal privacy and public security is still a work in progress.

• The challenge of climate change. Nothing will have more profound implications for the future of human rights in the 21st century than rising sea levels, expanding drought and the scarcity of resources they and other environmental changes will inevitably bring. The result could be paucity and violence on a scale rarely before seen. But for the most part human rights practitioners regard climate change as a practical problem that falls outside their bailiwick rather than a harbinger of human rights violations with which sooner or later they will have to deal.

Like all rules for living, human rights standards are subject to evolution. When the UDHR was unanimously adopted in 1948, few of its contemporary endorsers would have contemplated that it and subsequent human rights covenants and conventions would lead to widespread disapproval of the death penalty or support for the rights of gays and lesbians. That very fluidity cuts both ways of course. It makes for an expansion of our understanding of rights but it allows, at least theoretically, for their contraction as well. That is why a vibrant human rights movement is so important. And it is also why, of all the things that can be said of human rights, "boring" is not one of them.

When an organization has a huge budget, it can afford to waste a few dollars here and there without worrying that that profligacy will have a substantial impact on its mission. For an organization of UUSC's size, however, every penny counts.

That's why we're so proud we spend 87 cents of every dollar on programs. And it's why we take the three themes of of our 2012 Annual Report so seriously.

First, engagement. We're eager to use the people power at our disposal to optimize our effectiveness. Our members, most of whom are associated with Unitarian Universalist congregations, are natural born activists. They're itching to get their hands dirty, be it on their computer keyboards taking online actions or by building an eco-village in Haiti. UUSC is committed to helping our members do justice because a modest investment in activism can bring enormous dividends to everyone.

Second, innovation. Wherever we go in the world, we ask ourselves, "Who's been forgotten and who is doing the most creative, groundbreaking work to transform and empower those forgotten populations?" By finding the most innovative, entrepreneurial approaches to problems and crises, we accomplish several things at once: we support the risk takers, those on the cutting edge, who governments or more traditional agencies may have overlooked or shunned; we encourage new solutions to old quandaries; we engage with communities, often of women or ethnic minorities, too often marginalized in their societies; and we do all this at a modest cost.

But how do we know whether what we, our activists, and our partners are doing is truly making a difference, accomplishing our objectives? That brings us to our third theme, impact. Over the past year UUSC has begun a groundbreaking process of establishing measurements of project success and accountability, doing an honest assessment of impact, and learning from our achievements and perhaps even more often from when we fall short of our goals. It's not always easy to measure social change. Not everything we do is by any means quantifiable. But we're experimenting with different approaches to measuring impact because we know that at the end of the day the only thing that really counts is how many lives we've actually changed.

You'll find in our annual report many examples of our engagement with activists, our commitment to innovation, and our determination to make an identifiable impact on the world. You'll also find the voices and names of many of those who make our work possible; who know that UUSC is smart, nimble, and relentless; who want to see the cause of justice flourish; and who are convinced that UUSC is one of best means to make it so.

UUSC — there's no better investment.

To all of you who have made that investment, be it in time, energy, or money, our warmest, deepest thanks. Happy reading!

William F. Schulz
President and CEO

Chuck Spence
Chair, Board of Trustees

The primary elections have long since ended; the presidential debates have heightened voter interest; and the most expensive advertising blitz in world history has dulled our senses. Many of us are happy to see this almost two-year-long election season come to an end. Now is the time for every U.S. citizen to exercise his or her most precious right in a democratic society — the right to vote!

All of the partisan pageantry comes down to a dramatic finale on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. On Election Day, we express our values in a direct and public manner. We get to practice the great privilege and responsibility of voting. There are many reasons for U.S. citizens to exercise the right to vote, and it is always disconcerting to learn that the turnout of eligible voters in our country is most often the lowest of all the advanced democracies in the world.

In the United States, the right for all citizens to vote was not provided by law for nearly 200 years, and in many states today, thanks to new ID requirements, there are still barriers that discourage full participation. The original U.S. Constitution essentially provided voting rights for white, adult males, and the concept of universal suffrage was not written into law until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The history of electoral politics is rife with instances of exclusion and marginalization, and this is why it is the moral imperative of all U.S. citizens — regardless of race, religion, or creed — who are above the age of 18 and eligible to vote, to do so.

This is one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history. In fact, one candidate may win the popular vote and the other the Electoral College vote, the latter of which actually determines the next president. This is what happened in 2000 when former Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote nationally but Gorge W. Bush won the Electoral College vote that was ultimately confirmed by a controversial decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

As a nonprofit human rights organization, UUSC promotes the right to vote and other democratic processes not only in the United States but in such faraway places as Egypt, Ecuador, Kenya, South Africa, and Myanmar.

Few of our members and supporters can travel to distant countries to help promote human rights. But on Election Day in the United States, virtually all of our more than 40,000 members can be social and political activists by reminding their friends and neighbors that their vote is important in deciding the future course of history in their hometowns, states, and country.

In addition to the presidency, there are elections in every state for all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and in 33 states for the U.S. Senate. Additionally, there are important state and local elections, as well as ballot initiatives in virtually every state, including opportunities in four states to vote on marriage equality. For more information and details about the November 6, 2012, elections in your state and municipality, visit nonprofitvote.org.

As a faith-based organization, we are grounded in the principles of the Unitarian Universalist (UU) denomination, including the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. In the twentieth century, UUs were in the forefront of campaigns to extend and ensure the right to vote to all citizens regardless of race, gender, class, and other arbitrary identity barriers. During the height of the civil rights movements of the 1960s, UUs were on the front lines of the voting rights movement in Alabama, Mississippi, and other southern states.

On this Election Day, our legacy is in our hands and our moral compass can help determine our future. Far away from the cacophony of the political season, as we walk into the quiet reflection of the voting booth, we can ask ourselves, "What do I stand for? What is the world that I want to see? Who will help us achieve this vision?"

By William F. Schulz | Read it at HuffingtonPost.com

On a recent trip to Burma's Shan State, I was taken to see a well that provided water for three different villages. Children covered with mud from the well run-off were trying desperately to obtain water for their families. It was a daunting task because only about a foot of water remained in the well and that water was filthy. The dearth was not a result of drought — Shan State had gotten plenty of rain. It was simply because the authorities had not cared enough to provide adequate access and a well-functioning retrieval system. This problem, the villagers told me, has lasted for years.

California and Shan State have almost nothing in common ... except for a failure by authorities to take seriously the need for citizens to have adequate access to clean, affordable water. I traveled to Tulare County, CA, this past February and spent a day with Maria Herrera, of the Community Water Center (CWC), based in Visalia. We spoke to community members in Seville, Cutler and East Orosi, CA; visited the federal Bureau of Reclamation Central Valley Project; and viewed farming and dairy operations throughout the region. Over the past five years more than 11.5 million people in California have been forced to rely on water that violated state drinking water standards. Residents in Seville described turning on their taps and having tadpoles spill out!

The UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water investigated this situation in 2011. Catarina de Albuquerque quoted reports by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on contamination of drinking water supplies in ground water in Tulare County. Subsequently the University of California at Davis published a report on the impact that agricultural nitrates in drinking water have on human health-impacts that include blue baby syndrome, skin disease and other serious illnesses (http://groundwaternitrate.ucdavis.edu/). The Special Rapporteur concluded that residents in Tulare County spend upwards of ten percent of their income to purchase bottled water because their community wells are producing water unfit for human consumption (http://www.ushrnetwork.org/content/reportsdocuments/report-special-rapporteur-human-right-safe-drinking-water-and-sanitation-ca). That might not be a surprise in a developing country like Burma but it ought to be a source of shame and embarrassment in the United States.

A number of years ago Maria Herrera and the CWC, along with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, which I head, and other human rights, faith, environmental and justice organizations, formed a coalition, the Safe Water Alliance, to push for legislative change in water policy for California. In October, 2011, we celebrated when four out of five bills dealing with the human right to water were signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown. At the signing the Governor said: "The bills I have signed today will help ensure that every Californian has access to clean and safe sources of water. Protecting the water we drink is an absolutely crucial duty of state government."

But much as those bills helped, they were not enough, for the fifth bill, the most important, was not on the Governor's desk. AB 685 would require state agencies, whenever they exercise their administrative duties relevant to drinking water, to take significant steps toward achieving the right of every Californian to have safe, clean, affordable water, adequate for basic human needs. But AB 685 has been stalled in the State Senate Appropriations Committee since last year and this is the last week that Senate leaders can bring the bill to the floor before the end of the session.

Increasing demand for water, climate disruption, degradation and over-extraction of water resources — all these developments challenge governments and the public to grapple with the urgent task of setting a realistic, humane water policy for the 21st century. Unfortunately, the "problems of tomorrow" have arrived far sooner than we thought they would.

Those villagers in Burma were not satisfied with the paucity and filth of their water and, with increasing democratization in Burma, they have begun to find their voices to demand a response from public officials. If my travels to eighty-two countries around the world have taught me anything, it is how fortunate we are in this country to be free to use our voices, just as Maria Herrera has, to articulate the public interest and hold authorities to account for meeting it.

In no country — and least of all in the world's wealthiest — should it be acceptable to send children to schools where they find water fountains shut down, bearing signs reading "unfit for human consumption." But that is exactly what has happened in California. The State is of course economically strapped but what is government's task — its "crucial duty," to quote Governor Brown — if not to insure that basic human needs are met? And what need could be more basic, more fundamental to life, than water? The Senate leadership in California must bring AB 685 to the floor this week for action.

By William F. Schulz | Read it on the Christian Science Monitor website

Cambridge, Mass. — I recently returned from Burma, known officially as Myanmar. When I was executive director of Amnesty International USA (1994-2006), I would not have been granted a visa to enter Myanmar because of Amnesty's criticism of the government. This time I received a visa upon arrival at the airport in Yangon.

Similarly, Aung San Suu Kyi, the revered leader of the country's democracy movement, had chosen not to leave the country since 1989 for fear she would not be allowed back in. This time, having recently been elected to Parliament and assured of her right to return, she was in Thailand on her first travel outside the country in more than twenty-four years. I could finally get in at the same time she finally got out.

These are but two of the ways Myanmar has changed since March 2011, when general turned "civilian," Thein Sein, became president. Whether these and other relaxations of authoritarianism will last is naturally the first question on the mind of every Myanmar citizen. Is all this change simply a reflection of one man's (or one faction's) strategic predilections, or does it signal a genuine opening?

What is pretty clear is that the sanctions, economic and diplomatic, that the West and some of Myanmar's neighbors had brought to bear against the country had some effect. That's not because the government cared about the impact of those sanctions on the welfare of the people. It's because those who had made themselves rich with the government's help (Transparency International rates Myanmar one of the most corrupt nations on earth) realized that, with the West closed off to them, they had few places to invest their ill-gotten gains.

Whatever the motivation of the powerful, the people are ever so cautiously beginning to exercise their newfound freedom. Transitional democracies are notoriously unstable — see Egypt — in part because no one knows exactly what the new rules are or who the ultimate decision-makers will be. The press is flexing its poorly toned muscles by covering some of the controversies like it never has before.

On the one hand, this means there is more civic space for organized dissent, at least at the local level. One village, for example, in Myanmar had been beleaguered for years by the military appropriating sand for its own uses that the villagers needed for theirs. With the new melody of "people power" playing in their ears, the villagers sent an anonymous protest letter to the military, which, astonishingly, stopped stealing the sand. This was not, of course, because the military had suddenly become enlightened. It was because it couldn't know for sure that higher-ups might not heed the villagers' wishes and punish the military's excesses.

Of course, the usefulness of such uncertainty cannot last forever. The reason democracies are run by the rule of law is so that the people — and the military — know what the rules are and who will enforce them. Eventually the government will clarify the rules (written or unwritten), and at that point everyone will know whether the newfound intimations of democracy are fraudulent or serious.

In the meantime, the people must learn how to act democratically. I remember one Eastern European dissident saying to me after the 1989 upheavals that overthrew one communist government after another in that part of the world, "In the past, you could get fifteen years in prison for criticizing the government; ten years in prison for thinking about criticizing the government, and five years in prison for doing nothing at all. The biggest problem for me with freedom is not learning to speak freely; it is learning how to think like a free person."

Among other things, that "thinking like a free person" means recognizing that people are all in this struggle together.

Such a new mind-set cannot come too quickly, as witness the recent clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar's Rakhine State. The new ceasefires in Shan State and elsewhere are still fragile, and fighting continues in Kachin State. As Aung San Suu Kyi said at her long-delayed acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, all factions are responsible for violence, and all factions will need to work together to stop it. The same is true of building a new democracy.

Fortunately, Burma has great moral leadership not just in Ms. Suu Kyi but in the thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns who have already sacrificed enormously for the cause of freedom. If such leaders match their moral credibility with organizing power, the government will be hard-pressed to roll back its new initiatives. Stay tuned.

William F. Schulz, former executive director of Amnesty International USA, is president of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, an international human rights organization.

By William F. Schulz | Read it on HuffingtonPost.com

In May of 1997, in the middle of the Liberian Civil War, I led a mission to Liberia on behalf of Amnesty International (AI). Elections were going on at the same time in that damaged country and Charles Taylor, among others, was running for president. It was said that his campaign slogan was "Vote for me or I'll kill you!"

At the opening press conference that the AI mission held in Monrovia, one of the reporters from a newspaper that opposed Taylor asked me whether Amnesty believed that war criminals should be allowed to run for President, implying obviously that Taylor fell into that category. I replied that Amnesty took no position on who should be allowed to run for president but we naturally believed that all war criminals should be brought to justice. The next day that newspaper carried a banner headline, "War Criminals May Not Run for President," and attributed the statement to me.

That afternoon I went into the office of the editor and explained my position again, asking for a correction. "Oh, no problem," the editor assured me. The next day's headline was even larger: "YOU WILL BE BOOKED!" It quoted me as making that declaration.

That afternoon two of my Amnesty colleagues had an appointment to meet with Millie Buchanan, one of Taylor's so-called aides. "Mr. Taylor has a message for Dr. Schulz," she said. "Mr. Taylor is very concerned about Dr. Schulz's health. He says that Dr. Schulz will be booked with a bullet if he ever returns to Liberia and he should keep an eye out for his back in New York."

Needless to say, I took more than a passing interest, then, in the recent news that Charles Taylor had been convicted on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, meeting in The Hague. On trial since 2006 and on the witness stand for seven months, Taylor was found guilty of supporting and guiding the notorious rebel movement in Sierra Leone that hacked off limbs and heads with wild abandon. He was paid for his troubles in so-called blood diamonds.

Though Taylor still retains support in Liberia, that country is a far different place today than in 1997, having held two elections generally recognized as legitimate and headed as it is by Africa's first woman President, Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson. The importance of this verdict goes far beyond either Liberia or Sierra Leone, however.

Victims of human rights crimes sometimes lament the international community's ragged attempts to establish a regimen of international accountability. I was in Cambodia a few weeks ago and heard repeatedly that the trials of the aged Khmer Rouge leaders now going on there were failing to address the "real" perpetrators of atrocities and would never bring back loved ones, in any case. 

But the point of these trials is not just to bring justice to crimes past; it is to convince would-be future perpetrators to think twice before they act. That message is circulating slowly and haltingly simply because international legal mechanisms are slow and halting. But as the first head of state to be convicted by an international court since Nuremburg, Taylor has become a powerful symbol of the fact that sovereign immunity is a concept that is starting to tatter. 

The 1999 decision of the British Law Lords that Augusto Pinochet could be extradited to Spain to stand trial for his crimes as President of Chile started it all. Since then Slobodan Milosovic was extradited to The Hague and escaped his fate only by dying in 2006 before the trial ended. Former Cote d'Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo has been transferred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the sitting President of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been indicted by the ICC though he is not yet in custody.

What a wonderful world we would live in if everyone who committed a crime was arrested, promptly given a fair trial, and, if justifiably convicted, received an appropriate sentence. But no justice system is perfect, particularly one as complex as an international system which lacks even so much as an enforcement arm to take those accused of crimes into custody.

Perfect or not, however, the image of Charles Taylor — warlord, embezzler and escapee from a Massachusetts prison, by the way — booked, tried and convicted by judges from Ireland, Samoa and Uganda cannot help but be a satisfying one for many people. Monrovia is looking better and better for my next vacation.

William F. Schulz, President of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), served as Executive Director of Amnesty International USA from 1994-2006.

UUSC President William Schulz to address Unitarians about 'Immigration as a Moral Issue'

By Kay Campbell, The Huntsville Times 

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — The Rev. Dr. William Schulz, former director of Amnesty International USA from 1994 to 2006, has seen the worst human beings can do to each other — and the best.

"I see reason for hope in the long arc of human history," said Schulz, who will speak in Huntsville Saturday, April 21, 2012, at 9:30 a.m.

His will be the keynote address of the Mid-south District meeting of Unitarian Universalists, the denomination in which he is an ordained minister. The theme of this year's conference is "Immigration as a Moral Issue."

The meeting will be held at Weatherly Heights Baptist Church, on Cannstatt Drive behind the Southeast YMCA on Weatherly Road. Schulz's talk is open to the public.

"I still retain hope for the future because of the human spirit," Schulz said.

Even given recent vitriol in the U.S. in general and Alabama in particular over issues such as race, torture, immigration, health care and religious diversity, Schulz points to the progress in the world when it comes to issues such as human rights and community diversity in the 35 years he has been an ordained minister.

"In 1975, only about one-third of the world's countries were democracies; now it's about 60 percent," Schulz said Wednesday from his office in Boston at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, where he has been president since 2010. "And the world is more attune to the crimes committed by sovereign leaders."

In 1975, he said, something like the recent military coup in Mali that sought to overturn a democratic government there might have been ignored. Instead, outcry from other African leaders and leaders and people throughout the world helped avert the establishment of a military government.

For Unitarians especially, whose first principle affirms the worth and dignity of each human being, but for people of every faith, "justice and religion can never part hands," Schulz said. And his talk, although directed at Unitarian Universalists, will offer a message any person of faith could appreciate.

"I do believe that people of faith, of any faith, want to believe that human history has the possibility of redemption," Schulz said. "I hope people will leave the meeting revived in that conviction."

Schulz is the author of several books, including "In Our Own Best Interest: How defending human rights benefits us all," and editor of "Ruin of Human Rights: The Phenomenon of Torture."

The UUSC, an independent and non-sectarian human rights committee, was founded by the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations in 1940 as Unitarians sought ways to help the refugees fleeing the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia.

That legacy of the UUSC underscores the importance of remembering how categories of people, including Jews, Gypsies, political prisoners, homosexuals and the mentally ill, were singled out for discrimination and then detention, torture and death during World War II.

Schulz's talk Saturday comes a day ahead of the annual Huntsville observance of Yom HaShoah, which will be Sunday, 2 p.m., in the Loretta Spencer Hall of the Huntsville Museum of Art.