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.

It is our pleasure to announce the formation of the new Unitarian Universalist College of Social Justice and our great delight to announce the appointment of Rev. Kathleen McTigue as its inaugural director.

The UU College of Social Justice (CSJ) is a formal collaboration of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Its mission is to increase the capacity of Unitarian Universalists to catalyze justice. Building on several years of successful UUA-UUSC partnership, especially in the area of disaster response, the college will combine resources of both organizations to offer current leaders and future activists of any age a broader and more effective portfolio of service-learning and justice-education experiences. 

Our vision is to provide transformative learning experiences that equip our current and future leaders with a deeper firsthand understanding of the roots of injustice, direct experience in successful social change, a deeper grounding in Unitarian Universalism and their own spiritual resources, and encouragement to put their own call to justice into action. Beyond the service-learning and justice-education programs, which will serve as the starting point for CSJ, we aspire over time to assist congregations in discerning their own focus for social-justice work, to more effectively harness our collective UU power for change on selected issues of central importance to our faith, and to build our capacity for advancing justice in the local communities we serve. In all these respects, the college is intended to be an enduring educational institution that transforms lives and shapes our shared ministry for the years to come.

We could not be more fortunate than to have Rev. Kathleen McTigue lead the start-up of this new venture. McTigue brings an activist's passion to the work, having studied fascism in Spain, researched and written about economic strategies to end apartheid in southern Africa, and witnessed for peace through years of work in the United States and Central America. Most importantly, she brings 25 years of experience in parish ministry, having served for the last 21 years as senior minister of the Unitarian Society of New Haven, Conn. She has not only helped build a thriving congregation there but has been an extraordinarily effective alliance builder and strong public voice for justice on behalf of peace, marriage equality, and immigrant rights. In addition, McTigue has served in the leadership of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA). In all these forms of ministry, she has distinguished herself as a passionate, grounded, and highly accomplished leader. She was recently selected by her colleagues celebrating 25 years in ministry to speak on their behalf at this year's UUMA meeting in Phoenix, an honor that recognizes their esteem for her ministry.

McTigue will begin in her new role on a limited-time consulting basis as of May 21 and will be present for the official CSJ launch at this year's Justice General Assembly. She will begin as the full-time director of the college on July 16.

From the moment 74 years ago when American Unitarian Association President Frederick May Eliot asked Rev. Waitstill Sharp and Martha Sharp to undertake the work that ultimately led to the formation of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, our two institutions have been on a joint mission to cross boundaries that separate people, to become true allies with those who are marginalized and oppressed, and to be more powerful religious catalysts for justice. Today's announcement represents an exciting next step on that faithful journey.

Please join us in celebrating this new milestone for Unitarian Universalism and offering our hearty congratulations and full support to McTigue in this vital work.

In faith and witness,

» Support our vital work with a donation.

» Read FAQs about the UU College of Social Justice.

Putting politics aside in search of common ground

By William F. Schulz and Mark P. Lagon

When the American section of Amnesty International was first founded in the 1970s, William F. Buckley was one of its earliest supporters. The prime mover behind the American section, Ginetta Sagan, was a mentor to those of all political stripes, including, for example, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, whom no one has ever accused of being a "leftist." When George W. Bush called in his second inaugural address for the United States to affirm "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," he was issuing a call with which no human rights advocate could possibly disagree. The board of Freedom House, a prominent human rights organization, is rife with ex-Bush administration officials like William H. Taft IV and Paula J. Dobriansky, and with scholars like Ruth Wedgwood and Joshua Muravchik who are generally identified with the conservative end of the political spectrum.

And yet, despite the political diversity these instances represent, human rights are generally identified as a left-wing cause. There are many reasons for that, perhaps foremost among them the fact that human rights standards are established largely by international instruments, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (udhr), and enforced, to the extent to which they are "enforced" at all, by international institutions, such as the un Human Rights Council. Conservatives tend to resist subsuming American sovereignty to international regimens and to be suspicious of international institutions, in part because they include some member states lacking consent of the governed and basic liberties.¹ As a consequence, the United States has ratified fewer key human rights treaties than the other g20 nations and, when it has ratified them, has tended to attach reservations asserting the preeminent authority of the U.S. Constitution.²

Moreover, human rights have come to be associated with a number of causes — notably opposition to the death penalty; the closure of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay; and the assertion of a right to health care — that, justifiably or not, are considered liberal causes in American political terms. The fact that conservatives have played a prominent role in other landmark human rights struggles — such as the promotion of religious freedom; an end to the second Sudanese Civil War in 2005; and the campaign to end human trafficking — has failed to redress the perception that human rights advocates, with the exception perhaps of a handful of neoconservatives, are ineluctably drawn from the left.

As human rights figures identified with different parts of the political arc, we regret this bias because it does damage to the human rights cause. Michael Ignatieff has called human rights the "lingua franca of global moral thought," but moral thought is not the exclusive province of any one political position. Just as the standing of human rights claims declines if those claims are thought to be no more than the product of Western ideology or a so-called imperialist agenda, so too the power of human rights to influence U.S. foreign and domestic policies is diminished if human rights are perceived to be the concern of only one segment of the political community. When, on the contrary, a group of respected military leaders speak out against torture or former Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson pleads the case for marriage equality, stereotypes of what human rights advocates look like are constructively confounded. When conservative Republican Alberto Mora resigned as counsel general of the Department of the Navy over detainee policy, he did not suddenly become a liberal. The truth is that human rights champions do not come in one size that fits all, nor do they agree with one another on all issues. The late Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos, whose support for human rights was so widely recognized that the Human Rights Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives is named for him, could become irate at criticism of the United States by human rights organizations for its use of the death penalty.³

Clearly, there are many permutations to the positions broadly characterized here as liberal and conservative, and we are under no illusions that the fundamental tension between the claims and norms of international institutions and those of a powerful sovereign state like the United States can be easily resolved. To the extent that international human rights standards are at odds with current American jurisprudence or practice, as with the death penalty, or that participation in international institutions requires some compromise of American singularity, as it would with the International Criminal Court, there may long be conflict. Given that human rights are premised upon universality, which many on both left and right believe to be grounded in natural law, it hardly seems too much to hope that advancement of something as fundamental to our humanity might transcend political boundaries. And given that civil and political rights, long defended by the left, are predicated in large measure upon protecting liberty — that is, protecting the individual against an overbearing state, which is a bedrock principle of conservative political thought — human rights are hardly alien to the sensibilities found on the right.

Where the two political perspectives come into conflict, then, is often less over philosophical first principles than it is around the practical application of those principles to tough real-life conundrums. We turn to five key conundrums of this sort and corresponding suggestions for resolving them in ways that at least some who identify as liberal or conservative may consider common ground.

Security and liberty

Perhaps no issue has more robustly divided left and right, at least since 9/11, than the challenge of finding the right balance between security and liberty. Without re-litigating, so to speak, highly contentious decisions of the Bush administration, it is fair to say that it erred on the side of security to an extent that the Supreme Court in its historic 2004 decisions in Rasul v. Bush and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, for example, ultimately regarded as too great. Vice President Cheney's impassioned defense of waterboarding continues to draw rebuke from notable Republicans such as the party's 2008 presidential nominee, John McCain, who as recently as May 2011 condemned such "enhanced interrogation techniques" as "indisputably torture" and disavowed the notion that their use had led to the discovery of Osama Bin Laden.

At the same time, critics of the Bush counterterrorism policies have sometimes acted as if the solution to dealing with terrorism suspects was easy and self-evident. But the Obama administration has found it far harder to close gitmo than it had originally imagined and has reaffirmed indefinite detention for some prisoners and the use of military tribunals rather than civilian courts for others.

The dilemma derives in part from a contradiction inherent in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself and the pliability of certain human rights concepts. Article 3 of the UDHR guarantees the "right to life, liberty and security of person." This means that terrorist attacks are themselves profound violations of human rights and governments have every obligation to prevent them. But enforcement of the right to "security of person" can easily come into conflict with other rights articulated in the udhr, such as those to a "public trial" (Article 11), depending upon the definition of "public."

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (iccpr), to which the United States is a state-party, provides that some rights, including the right not to be tortured or subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, are nonderogable. It allows for others, however, including rights surrounding criminal prosecution, to be temporarily revoked or suspended "in time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation" but only "to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation" — hardly concepts that lend themselves to strict precision and, indeed, ones that provide governments potential carte blanche to do as they please. On top of all of which there is still no internationally accepted definition of "terrorism," and the Geneva Conventions, which control for the treatment of prisoners in time of war, were designed primarily to address the behavior of states rather than nonstate actors.

What left and right ought readily to agree upon, therefore, is that, while there is no place for torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of prisoners under any circumstances, other elements of international law designed to control state actions in response to the targeting of civilians for political or religious purposes are far more ambiguous. Was the U.S.'s killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen in Yemen regarded as a terrorist leader, for instance, an example of an extrajudicial execution, as some civil libertarians claim, or was it a legitimate battlefield kill? The answer turns on interpretations of the laws of war — laws that are ill-equipped in some measure to address a world in which the very definition of war itself is subject to debate. With the secretary of defense calling the defeat of al-Qaeda "within reach," now may be the most opportune time to consider international review of those laws. Since it is not acceptable to hold a terrorism suspect indefinitely without trial or to release an avowed terrorist into the general population without restraints, we require a third alternative. It is in the interests of both liberals and conservatives to work together to find one.

Accountable autocracies

Ever since jeane Kirkpatrick tried to distinguish between authoritarian and totalitarian governments in her 1979 Commentary essay "Dictatorships and Double Standards," left and right have been arguing about when national interests trump accountability for human rights abuses. Kirkpatrick's contention was that authoritarian regimes are more susceptible to gradual reform, and that tenet provided the rationale for the Reagan administration's alliances with dictatorships in Guatemala, the Philippines, and Argentina. Liberals criticized those alliances and berated the notion that they were in our national interest, and in fact the Reagan administration ultimately shifted from praising Marcos in the Philippines to urging him to leave power, as it also urged South Korea, Taiwan, and Chile to democratize. But Reagan was neither the first nor last president to align the U.S. with countries whose values hardly reflect those embodied in the U.S. Constitution. All presidents have benignly toasted their Chinese counterparts, despite China's unrelenting record of human rights violations, and the U.S.'s cooperation with Middle Eastern despots, including at one time both Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi, has often proven embarrassing.

Two realities vie for preeminence. On the one hand, human rights are but one of many factors that any president must take into consideration in foreign relations. Military security and economic interests, to take the most obvious, may sometimes trump them. But it is also the case that suborning dictators has almost always proven self-defeating in the long run, and support for human rights has proven far more congruent with the national interest than realpolitikers have thought.  As such, it can be far wiser for the U.S., if it is to make ad hoc alliances with repressive regimes, to do so honestly, citing interest-based justifications and voicing support for liberalization, rather than the current practice of calculating military and economic interests with little regard to human rights practices and only later tacking on an expression of concern about an ally's human rights record.

How different would the U.S.'s reputation on the "street" in the Middle East be today had the Obama administration not waffled so dramatically in the early stages of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and, even better, had the United States made clear years ago that our support for the Mubarak regime, for example, was a marriage of convenience? In other words, that we were prepared to advance that alliance for strategic reasons, as we do still with Saudi Arabia, but that the regime's values were radically at odds with ours; that there were certain red lines beyond which the regime could not go in its treatment of its citizens if it wished to retain our friendship; that we were supportive of those indigenous leaders who sought nonviolent, democratic change; and that we would help advance that change in every peaceful way we could. No doubt many Egyptian activists would still be mistrustful of the U.S., but perhaps less so, and in any case we would be in a far stronger position to argue our human rights bona fides than we are today.

And what would that mean about accountability for crimes when the regime fell, or in the far more tricky context in which a despot seeks assurances of "safe passage" in return for his departure? The notion that human rights offenders ought always to be held accountable for their crimes is obviously an appealing one and one that human rights organizations generally insist upon as a matter of course. (Kathryn Sikkink marshals the best evidence for the notion offered to date in her book The Justice Cascade.) But just as domestic prosecutors often plea bargain a defendant out of a maximum sentence in the interests of some greater community good, so autocratic rulers may sometimes justifiably be offered "retirement" as an incentive to their leaving power.

This should never be the case, however, with those accused of genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity, such as President al-Bashir of Sudan, and, as international justice mechanisms like the International Criminal Court are more legitimized (both in the U.S. and around the world), the last word about such high-order affronts to all humankind will increasingly fall to multilateral courts. Until that happens, we will need to rely on a bias in favor of accountability tempered by the recognition that those most directly affected by events on the ground, including victims and their advocates, will need to be the ones to decide the right balance between reconciliation and justice.

In the meantime perhaps both left and right can agree that crawling into bed with human rights violators is always a nasty proposition, one that ought to be resisted as fervently as possible, and that if in exceptional circumstances we do it, we do it with our eyes wide open, owning up to our decision, and looking for every opportunity to crawl out as soon as possible.  

Democracy and human rights

Inherent in the previous discussion of how the U.S. should relate to repressive regimes is the assumption that we ought to support the advancement of democracy around the world. But because the "Freedom Agenda" is closely identified with George W. Bush and because it appears to have been one rationale for the use of force in Iraq, the human rights left has been reluctant in recent years to embrace democracy promotion as a legitimate sibling cause.

In fact, this reticence long predates the George W. Bush administration. For many years Amnesty International claimed that it favored no particular form of government — only governments of whatever stripe that support human rights. And human rights leaders have repeatedly and correctly pointed out that democracy was no guarantee of respect for human rights, as witness the U.S.'s own failings over the years, notably regarding equal access to justice for African Americans.

The truth is, however, that democracy is almost inevitably a necessary, if not sufficient, requirement for the protection of human rights and, though it can certainly not be imposed on a people who are not inclined to embrace it, the world is a far better place and human rights far more healthy for its spread. Human rights cannot be enforced without accountability, and accountability is impossible without such fixtures of democracy as free elections, a free press, an independent judiciary, and fidelity to the rule of law.

If the upheavals in the Middle East have proven anything, they have proven that democracy is a more appealing vision than either terrorism or the most economically prosperous state-controlled system. It has been noted that the protestors in Tunisia and Egypt have dealt enormous blows to both al-Qaeda and China, the first by demonstrating that sclerotic governments can be overthrown without violence and the second by demanding the very thing that is most conspicuously missing from the Chinese political system: freedom. And even if what follows is at first a less far-reaching democracy with less respect for women or religious minorities than many of us would wish, the vision of that democratic, human-rights-respecting genie will never be forced back into the bottle; it will fester until it finally thrives fully.

Left and right ought to be able to agree: Democracy promotion is important to the struggle for human rights and the two ought to be proudly pursued together.

Religious freedom and religious conflict

Orlando figes, the most recent chronicler of the Crimean War, says that that war "opened up the Muslim world of the Ottoman Empire to Western armies" and "sparked an Islamic reaction against the West which continues to this day." He goes on to observe that "If the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the rise of militant Islam have taught us anything, it is surely that religion plays a vital role in fueling wars."⁴ And it has done that since long before the Crusades.

But if former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is to be believed, American diplomats have long been naïve about the role of religion in foreign affairs or even downright hostile to its consideration. As Albright told the NewsHour's Ray Suarez, "When there was a serious [international] issue to either be studied or make some decisions about, people would say, ‘Well, this is complicated enough. Let's not bring God and religion into it.'"⁵ In a little noticed internal debate in 2004, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice restrained U.S. Ambassador to the un John Danforth (a former senator and Episcopal priest) from placing a major focus on religious understanding at the un Security Council, probably making his tenure in that job all the more brief.⁶

Perhaps all this is one reason that the human rights left initially reacted with considerable skepticism when in 1997 the Christian evangelical community began organizing around legislation to create a special office in the State Department to monitor religious persecution. Would such an office be privileging one human rights violation or, even worse, one religion (Christianity) over others?⁷ Eventually the position of U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom, along with a bipartisan commission, was established with the understanding that it would make recommendations regarding all instances of persecution. But even at that, the Obama administration took more than two years just to nominate a candidate for the ambassadorship, Susan Johnson Cook, who was finally confirmed in April 2011 — hardly an indication that religious freedom is a top priority.

One does not need to believe that religious freedom is the "first freedom," in the sense of the "most important," as its ardent supporters frequently claim, to agree that it holds a respected place in the panoply of recognized rights.⁸ It is intertwined with other fundamental freedoms, as aptly captured by the broad label "freedom of conscience." Article 18 of the udhr asserts that "Everyone has the right to freedom of . . . religion," including "freedom to change his religion . . . and . . . to manifest his religion . . . in teaching, practice, worship and observance." The frequent violation of the rights of religious minorities, be they Jehovah's Witnesses in Eritrea, Ba'hai in Iran, Jews in Venezuela, the Muslim Masalit in Sudan, Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan, or others anywhere else, ought to be a cause that claims the support of both left and right. Similarly, the actions of the un Human Rights Council to curb free speech under the guise of combatting "defamation of religion" from 2007 to 2010 are ones that both liberals and conservatives can abhor.

Is Islam compatible with democracy? The case of Indonesia, the country with the largest population of Muslims and a demonstrable, if sometimes messy, adherence to democracy, proves that it is, and the recent elections in Tunisia appear to confirm that conviction. But there is no question that some forms of Islam are antagonistic to religious freedom and other human rights strictures as well. It is too early to know whether the enthusiasm for democracy and human rights manifest in the recent Middle East revolutions will survive into maturity, though it is a pretty safe bet that whatever follows will not mimic the American model of strict separation between church (mosque) and state.

But such a rigid separation is not necessarily indispensable for respect for human rights to occur. It is probably too much to expect young democracies steeped in religious traditions to check those traditions at the governance door, any more than the United States did in its early days — an issue that is still alive for some, as evidenced by the continuing debate about whether ours is a "Christian nation."

What is important is that, whatever form those new governments take, even if their laws are based upon traditional religious norms, they provide checks and balances that offer a meaningful measure of protection for religious minorities or minority points of view. Anything less will not only lead to human rights violations but social instability and conflict as well. Upon that surely both liberals and conservatives can agree.

Civil and political vs. social and economic rights

Conservatives have traditionally blanched at social and economic rights. Part of their distaste has been prompted by the invocation of those rights as a pretext for repression on the part of regimes hostile to civil and political rights. At the same time, the conflation of social and economic rights with "socialism" or government control is a misnomer. The recognition of social and economic rights does not require a particular type of government or economic system, nor are those rights incompatible with capitalism. How those rights are realized may take any number of different forms.

Liberals in turn have been reluctant to tie fulfillment of social and economic rights to improvements in civil and political ones, such as through the Millennium Challenge Corporation — this despite the mantra to which the human rights left subscribes that both sets of rights are "indivisible" and the evidence, China notwithstanding, that in the long run, failure to protect civil and political rights can easily undermine progress toward the realization of social and economic ones. Liberals have also failed to acknowledge sufficiently the extent to which a program such as pepfar, initiated by George W. Bush, represented a significant advance not just in the fight against aids but for social and economic rights as well.

Both sides need to rethink their posture toward such rights. Conservatives need to recognize that not only is their pursuit fully consistent with U.S. national interests (since when, after all, have widespread penury and disease ever advanced American interests?) but that many of the goals the right champions require protection of both sets of rights. Human trafficking, for example, is the child of both poverty and the absence of legal protections for marginalized groups like women, minorities, and migrants.⁹

At the same time, liberals need to acknowledge the demonstrable connection between good governance, an independent judiciary, a free press and other markers of civil and political rights, on the one hand, and the successful realization of social and economic rights on the other. undp's Arab Development Reports, for example, have conclusively demonstrated the connection between respect for the rights of women and improvements in education, health care, and economic development. It is not just that democracy and respect for human rights prevent such violations of social and economic rights as human-induced famines, as Amartya Sen has so famously demonstrated; it is that they are a key factor in the reduction of poverty, illiteracy, homelessness and disease themselves.  

The stakes in the struggle to meet basic social and economic needs sufficient to realize full human dignity are too great to allow them to be undermined by ideological rigidities from any quarter.

Common ground

No doubt there are numerous other areas where common ground can be found on human rights between at least some on both the left and right. Damaging as they can be to rights at times, for example, militaries can play a critical role in their protection. As the recent intervention in Libya has demonstrated, support of such military action crosses political lines (as does opposition).

The suggestions offered here are likely to evoke dissent on both sides of the political equation. But a more unified human rights movement, even if only imperfectly sewn together, will be a far stronger force than we have today. What we need in the struggle for human rights is not dogmatism but policies that are as resilient and creative as the principles they seek to advance.

Mark P. Lagon, a former State Department official, is the MSFS International Relations chair at Georgetown University and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. William F. Schulz is president and CEO of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) and former executive director of Amnesty International USA.

¹ See, e.g., the address by Senator Jesse Helms before the United Nations Security Council on January 20, 2000.

² William F. Schulz "The Power of Justice: Applying International Human Rights Standards to American Domestic Practices," (Center for American Progress, June 2009).

³ An observation based upon several conversations between Lantos and William F. Schulz.

⁴ Quoted in Gary J. Bass, "For God and Nation," New York Times Book Review (July 10, 2011).

⁵ Available at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june06/albright_05-10.html (accessed January 4, 2012).

6 Observed by Mark P. Lagon during his work as deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs.

⁷ For a description of these conflicts, see T. Jeremy Gunn, "A Preliminary Response to Criticisms of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998," Brigham Young University Law Review (2000).

⁸ Religious freedom is referred to as the "first freedom" because it is the first right enumerated in the American Bill of Rights. But, inasmuch as human rights are established by action of the international community, that placement carries no implication of primacy.

⁹ See Mark P. Lagon, "Trafficking and Human Dignity," Policy Review 152 (December 2008 & January 2009); and Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros, "And Justice for All," Foreign Affairs 89:3 (May-June 2010).

The following post, "A Solution for Saleh," by UUSC President William F. Schulz, was published in the Huffington Post on December 30, 2011.

The recent decision of the U.S. government to admit the embattled President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to the country for medical treatment presents a classic human rights conundrum. Though a friend of Saddam Hussein and conciliatory toward Iran, Saleh has been an ally of the United States against al Qaeda. But according to human rights groups, he and his security forces have been responsible for hundreds of deaths since the Yemeni opposition took to the streets last spring to demand his ouster. By rights, his opponents claim, Saleh should be brought to trial, not provided top-notch medical care and, presumably, a comfortable retirement. At the same time, there is much to be said for removing him from the scene in Yemen — something Saleh has repeatedly agreed to and then reneged upon — and letting Yemen get on with its future, however fraught it may be.

If we lived in an ideal world, all those who are alleged to have committed crimes of whatever stripe would be brought before a bar of justice and, if convicted, sentenced. But just as prosecutors sometimes decide to plea-bargain a case or even not to prosecute an obviously guilty party because of extenuating circumstances such as an overriding state interest, so nations often have to decide whether it makes sense to offer a human rights offender safe haven in exchange for a chance at peace. The most recent dramatic example of that dilemma presented itself, at least theoretically, in the case of Muammar Qaddafi. Had Qaddafi been willing to flee Libya early in the conflict, thus no doubt saving scores of lives, a reasonable argument could have been made that offering him immunity might have been the better option than insisting upon justice, despite his decades of human rights violations.

One solution to this quandary is to establish a reliable system of international accountability. Were the International Criminal Court (ICC) the universally recognized arbiter of the guilt or innocence of the world's tyrants, supported by all nations, its indictments enforced, human rights offenders would know that the odds of their finding a country willing to host them and hence of their escaping punishment for their crimes were minimal. But of course major powers, including the United States, are not parties to the ICC; even some of its member states refuse to honor its indictments; and the Court has not yet succeeded in convicting anyone.

In the absence of consistent enforcement of international law, therefore, the burden of holding human rights violators to account often falls to individual victims of those crimes. Fortunately, in the United States, we have not only statutes (the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act) that allow for civil suits against alleged perpetrators but also an organization, the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), founded in 1998, that facilitates such litigation. CJA and its clients have successfully won judgments against wrong-doers from China to Haiti, El Salvador to Peru.

So one option with regard to Saleh, following his admittance to the US, may be to bring civil suit against him on behalf of some of those he has harmed. On February 21, 2012, when the transfer of power in Yemen is finalized, Saleh will no longer be a head of state and hence protected by sovereign immunity. At that point legal action becomes at least theoretically tenable. Of course, the US may have made guarantees of immunity to Saleh and may seek to intervene to stop such a suit but that would put the government in the uncomfortable position of defending an alleged human rights criminal. If the Administration is intent on admitting Saleh and, for whatever reasons, unwilling to return him to Yemen for trial, let it at least refuse to shield him from civil suits, thereby preserving at least one clean hand in the dirty business of dealing with despots.

By William F. Schulz

Advancements in human rights come in either leaps or smaller steps, but far more often in steps. We notice the leaps, of course: In the 1990s, apartheid ended in South Africa and so did communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; in 2002, the International Criminal Court was established. We saw another leap in 2011 with the Arab Spring.

It is too early to tell the full implications of the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya for human rights, to say nothing of the future of Syria or Bahrain. But at the very least they demonstrate that tens of thousands of Muslims, not incidentally including women, were willing to put their lives on the line for a chance at greater freedom. The successful humanitarian military intervention in Libya set a precedent that cannot help but unnerve tyrants everywhere.

But most human rights change comes about one step at a time, in those relatively modest forward movements that may not seem momentous at first, but often prove in the long run to be transformative. We had lots of such developments in 2011, some of them barely noted in the media.

One that has gotten far less attention than it deserves has been the role of regional organizations in the pursuit of human rights.

Traditionally it has been the United Nations or one of the great powers, often the United States, which has taken the lead in confronting human rights violations. But this year the Arab League, long an apologist for authoritarian leaders, not only provided cover for the military intervention in Libya but is signaling strong disapproval of the carnage in Syria. Indeed, Arab League monitors are on the ground in Syria today.

And one of the reasons that Burma (Myanmar) may be on the brink of reform is because of its desire to be seen as a leader within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Having to be accountable to your neighbors, not just the international community, both improves enforcement — the more sheriffs, the better! — and signals that human rights norms, like respect for free speech or abhorrence of mass atrocities, have now penetrated more locally.

Or consider that people at the grassroots seem to have found their voices in some of the most surprising places. It was not just in Tahrir Square or at Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that average citizens took to the streets. Russia, long thought a "hotbed" of passivity, has been rocked by protests over electoral fraud.

China, which experiences thousands of minor citizen revolts each year over such issues as corruption and environmental damage, usually leaves their resolution to local officials. But demonstrations in Wukan, Guangdong Province, over secret land deals and the killing of a local villager became so large, raucous, and well-publicized that higher-ups felt the need to step in to negotiate.

Even in repressive Kazakhstan, oil workers have refused to give up their protests over wages and working conditions despite a brutal government response. Thanks to the Internet, citizens in every corner of the globe (with the exception of North Korea) are learning that even the most authoritarian government cannot afford to ignore its people's will forever. 

Or finally look at respect for the rule of law. True, Muammar Qaddafi was summarily executed by the Libyan rebels. But Laurent Gbagbo, former Ivory Coast strongman, was transferred by his adversaries to The Hague following his indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity committed after he refused to concede his defeat for reelection.

International law is still a fragile instrument and the ICC's failure to win any convictions of those it has indicted means that its effectiveness has not yet been proven. But Mr. Gbagbo's transfer, with the support even of countries like the United States that has failed to join the Court, reflects recognition that legal remedies can often be more attractive than military ones.

All this is not to deny that rape continues largely unabated in Congo or that China continues to hold thousands in prison without trial or that Robert Mugabe continues to use force and fear to sustain his rule in Zimbabwe. Burma may slip back into total repression and who knows when North Korea will  emerge from it. Occasionally human rights even regress.

But at the end of the day, the fundamentally positive direction of change is clear. For human rights, 2011 was a year far more deserving of celebration than tears.

William F. Schulz, former Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, is President of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

The sudden death of North Korea's Kim Jong-il presents the world with a new conundrum regarding the most secretive nation on the globe: will Kim's son, Kim Jong-un, in his 20s, be able to hold onto power and perpetuate the repressive regimes of his father and grandfather or will some combination of circumstances or new leadership present an opportunity for a ratcheting down of hostilities and tension? In the short run, North Korea's anxiety about the transition is likely to be accompanied by even more belligerent talk, if not actions, as the younger Kim tries to consolidate his power and burnish his credentials as a strongman. But, as we are seeing right now in Myanmar, even the most authoritarian societies can sometimes modify their ways.

UUSC has not been active on the Korean Peninsula since the early 1950s when our predecessor organization was instrumental in introducing social-work education there. But what our work around the world for more than 70 years has taught us is two things: First, that the existence of repressive regimes anywhere reinforces the need to redouble our work for justice and human rights wherever we have an opening to do that. That is why we have been so active in Myanmar, for example, creating a revolving-loan fund to help women and communities at large develop sustainable livelihoods. And second, that those opportunities for change can arise in the most unexpected places.

I'm not predicting that North Korea will be one of them. But I am assuring you that whenever opportunities present themselves to bring greater openness, justice, and human rights to the world, UUSC will be there. 

What an irony — that the great Czech democrat Vaclav Havel and the great North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-il would die within days of one another. But what a source of hope that UUSC exists to help advance Havel's values — and yours — and to do all we can to see that there are fewer and fewer regimes like Kim Jong-il's spreading their repression across the earth.

We can only do that with your continuing support. Won't you join us then in this season of hope and promise to spread your values wherever the opportunity arises?

The following post, "Human Rights Day 2011: Signals of Hope," by UUSC President William F. Schulz, was published in the Huffington Post on December 8, 2011.

The year 2011 has been momentous for human rights. The Arab Spring alone promises to reshape the human rights landscape for generations to come. Add to that the independence of South Sudan, the apparent opening in Myanmar and, domestically, Occupy Wall Street, with its plea for a new era in economic rights for the 99 percent, and you have the makings of a watershed year.

Behind these headline developments are a variety of important markers worth noting as we celebrate Human Rights Day on December 10, 2011, because they carry the potential for long-lasting change in the very way we think about human rights.

The emergence of the Arab League, for example, as a broker in the efforts to stop deadly violence in Libya and now Syria signals not just a newfound potency for the league itself. It also reflects an emerging international consensus that sovereignty no longer bestows immunity when it comes to mass atrocities. The fact that the international community, à la the Obama Doctrine on humanitarian intervention, treats different countries differently when it comes to military action, does not mean that the norm — "Thou shalt not kill your own people" — is not well on its way to being established.

Or take the growing role that Turkey is claiming for itself in the larger community of Muslim states. It was not too long ago that Turkey would have been included in anyone's list of serious human-rights offenders and its treatment of its Kurdish population still leaves much to be desired. But the fact that Turkey, a vibrant democracy with an Islamic ruling party, is seeking to export its model of governance to others in the Islamic world reinforces the fact that Islam need not equate to autocracy when it comes to the use of political power. The vote in Tunisia has already proven that and, though the Islamists may well claim victory in Egypt, they will find, like others before them who have taken the reins of power, that governing requires pragmatism more than purity. That is particularly true in as raucous a society as Egypt's.

Or, finally, consider the little-noticed transfer of Laurent Gbagbo, former Ivory Coast strongman, to The Hague following his indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity committed following his refusal to step down after he had lost reelection. Three things make this case far more important than the fate of Gbagbo himself: first, that the failure to honor the results of clean, fair democratic elections prompted outrage sufficient to reverse the theft — until recent years something all too rare in Africa; second, that Gbagbo, unlike Muammar Qaddaffi, was not killed by his adversaries once they had him in his clutches but turned over to international authorities; and third, that the ICC has established its credibility sufficiently that virtually all parties involved, including the United States, which has pointedly refused to join the court, saw it as an appropriate vehicle for helping Ivory Coast address its demons.

All this is not to say that China does not continue to defy virtually all standards of civil and political rights or that rape does not continue to plague Congo or that Belarus does not continue to imagine itself still living in Soviet times. There is still plenty about the current state of human rights to cloud even the rosiest-colored glasses. But it is to say that, though the struggle for human rights be long, it is headed in the right direction. And that would make the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified 63 years ago on December 10, inordinately proud.

The following post, "Famine in East Africa: It's Not Over Yet," by UUSC President William F. Schulz, was published in the Huffington Post on November 30, 2011.

Ten days ago the New York Times carried the headline, "Somalia Famine Eases with Rainfall and Aid" and quoted UN officials as saying that the number of people facing imminent starvation in Somalia had dropped by half a million to 250,000. To those of us who have been trying to get assistance to the region for the past six months, this is of course good news.

In the first place, it is good just to get the famine mentioned in the mainstream press. Between mid-October and mid-November, CNN had cited the famine fewer than 10 times while referencing Kim Kardashian's mini-marriage almost 70 and Herman Cain's alleged sexual escapades nearly 200. And it is good news because fewer people are dying. But the true story is far more complex than it appears.

Aid agencies are often accused of exaggerating the direness of humanitarian crises for their own mercenary reasons. When people are thought not to be in jeopardy, funds dry up; success breeds indifference. In the case of Somalia, NGOs and the UN have done a remarkable job of getting aid to the needy under extraordinarily difficult circumstances — a failed government in Mogadishu; threats from the terrorist group Al Shabab; a military incursion by Kenya; and an utterly inadequate infrastructure for the delivery of supplies. The international community can take some justifiable pride in its accomplishments. But equally justified are the worries.

I live in Gloucester, Mass., home of The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger's famous account of the sword fishing boat Andrea Gail and the perfect conjunction of low pressure, high pressure and tropical moisture that sunk her near Sable Island in the north Atlantic in the fall of 1991. I have frequently thought of the applicability of that metaphor to Somalia the past six months as it experienced its own perfect storm through a combination of drought, governmental incompetence and violence — first internal violence prompted largely by Al Shabab, and then violence wrought by Kenyan (and, potentially, Ethiopian) intervention. The result was as many as 13 million people across the Horn of Africa in need of emergency assistance.

That number is now down to 4 million — better but still about the population of Los Angeles. Three of the six zones in Somalia, the worst of the affected areas being the ones controlled by Al Shabab, still face famine and Al Shabab continues to threaten and harass aid workers. What has been little noticed, moreover, is that drought knows no borders. The crisis is not confined to Somalia but has spilled over into Kenya and Ethiopia, both relatively stable countries until now, where it could have long-term drastic consequences.

Among other things, tens of thousands of Kenyans and Ethiopians have been internally displaced by the famine and the conflict. Because refugee complexes take only those who have crossed borders, tensions between the internally displaced and Somali refugees remain high. In addition, Somalia is a vortex that has already drawn Kenya into the fighting and threatens to do the same with Ethiopia, thus destabilizing the region further and putting more children are at increased risk of forced conscription and sexual appropriation. Perhaps most damaging in the long run is the destruction to the pastoral lifestyles that so many worked so hard to establish. With the loss of their herds to drought, men have abandoned their families, leaving women and children even more vulnerable than usual, and providing a potential source of fresh recruits for the militias that have so plagued the region.

The famine is, in other words, just one of the lenses through which to view this tragedy. And that makes sense because the famine was but a symptom of far deeper underlying fissures. Not only can the partial alleviation of the food emergency be quickly reversed if the international community lets down its guard but those fissures will only get worse if Kenya and Ethiopia get drawn into a long-running war.

So, reasonable as it may be to pause for a moment to celebrate progress, it is critically important to keep in mind that that perfect storm has far from abated and now threatens to sweep up two more countries in its tumultuous wake. Somalia itself will not soon be righted but ongoing attention to the region's misery will help contain the contagion. And while that may not be as immediately intriguing as Kim or Herman's relational woes, it is in the last analysis far more morally and strategically compelling.

UUSC President William F. Schulz (Photo by David Vita)

The following post, "Why the Left Is Often Late to Tea," by UUSC President William F. Schulz, was published in the Huffington Post on October 14, 2011.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) phenomenon, as nascent as it is long overdue, represents an opportunity unparalleled in recent American history for a grassroots movement motivated by progressive sentiments to change American political culture. But in order to do so, it must learn some lessons from the Left's own history, from the Arab Spring and, ironically enough, from the Tea Party with which it is so often compared.

I went to Oberlin College at the height of the anti-Vietnam War movement. At Oberlin the principal focus of that movement was the military recruiters who came to campus to seek candidates for ROTC. One morning as the recruiter drove into town his car was surrounded by a group of 40 to 50 students. For more than four hours the recruiter sat in his car in his crisp uniform; the students chanted anti-war slogans; the recruiter would occasionally inch his car forward; the students would re-position themselves frantically to stop his movement; and the cries of "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?" would echo across the campus.

And then, after four hours, something very human happened. The recruiter said that he had to go to the bathroom. This was not something the students had planned on. It threw them into a quandary. Finally, this being the era of "participatory democracy," the students took a vote. By a close margin it was decided that they would allow the officer to get out of the car and go to the bathroom provided that he promised to return to captivity immediately after he had flushed. The recruiter readily agreed; the students set him free; and ten minutes later the devastating news was transmitted by word of mouth to the students surrounding the now-empty car: "The recruiter has broken his word!" He had gone straight from the bathroom to the administration building and had set up his recruiting table just as he'd planned to do four hours earlier.

I have always found this one of the most telling examples of why the left wing often fails at political change. In the first place, the students had no plan--not only no plan for a full bladder but no coordinated plan for what to do with the recruiter and the car other than hold them both indefinitely. This small incident of theater was not integrated into a larger strategy. And in the second place, the students had no adequate understanding of power. Here was a military officer trained in the ways of war who represented what the students regarded as a morally bankrupt government that would stop at nothing, including killing children, to achieve its ends. And yet a majority of students thought that this officer would for some reason feel himself morally compelled to keep a promise! The students had obviously never learned or had forgotten Frederick Douglas's famous words, "Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will."

CNN's Don Lemon recently said to the media spokesperson for Occupy Wall Street: "The Tea Party's message is 'No new taxes' and 'Smaller government.' What's yours?" The answer: "Active democracy and every voice counts." But those are instrumental messages. What OWS and its potential allies need is a demand--"Tax the 1%," perhaps. The Tea Party knows that demands can be rejected but they cannot be ignored. Vague stirrings of discontent, even rage, can be dismissed unless they are either channeled into political change within the system or grow so massive that they threaten to bring down the whole political infrastructure.

The latter is what happened in Tunis and Cairo. So many people took to the streets that they brought down the rulers themselves. But note two things. First, that they had very concrete demands: "Mubarak out!" and "Yes to human rights!" And second, that they succeeded because the police and military ultimately turned, at least temporarily, against the ruling elite. That is hardly a possibility in this country so it leaves the option of political transformation.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has gotten hold of profound truths: that after nearly destroying the economic underpinnings of the society, for example, corporations have managed largely to avoid meaningful new regulations and are now holding onto more than $2 trillion in cash and liquid assets--assets that could be used to put people back to work but are instead being hoarded by the already wealthy.

It ought to be a slam dunk to exploit such a situation for political change. And it will be if the Left learns what the Tea Party already knows. As one of its chief financiers, Charles Koch, put it: "To bring about social change [requires] a strategy that is vertically and horizontally integrated, [spanning everything] from idea creation to policy development to education to grassroots organizations to lobbying to litigation to political action." Or, as an old Zen saying has it, "After ecstasy, the laundry." Occupy Wall Street has tapped into the hope and the energy. Now it needs to channel that enthusiasm into strategies that can change the country.

William F. Schulz is president of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and former executive director of Amnesty International USA.