The Foreign Service Journal, June 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2020 25 example. At a time when global tides are running in the wrong way, a high-level and active commitment to religious freedom can be wind in the sails of human rights. Of course, I would want to tack in a direction that would ensure that this freedom is pro- tected along with the others. Should the United States pursue an expansive vision of human rights at home and abroad—more rights for more people moving forward—regardless of cultural context or social and political consensus among our friends, allies, partners and/ or strategic rival states? Should our human rights agenda in a bilateral relationship vary from country to country, and if so, what are the determining factors? We cannot whitewash violations, even by governments whose help we need, and maintain credibility and the broader benefits With the world at war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his State of the Union address, remembered as the “Four Freedoms” speech, to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Jan. 6, 1941. Seated behind Roosevelt are Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, left, and Vice President John N. Garner. Inset: An engraving of the “Four Freedoms” at the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C. WIKIMEDIACOMMONS/ANOTHERBELIEVER/CCBYSA-3.0 APPHOTO/GEORGER.SKADDING there be? (For example, the current administration has focused on religious freedom; is that a reasonable stance?) I think that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 says it all very well. From an American point of view, the UDHR answered the summons of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech of 1941, where he called for universality in the repeated phrase “everywhere in the world,” and where he went beyond political rights to economic ones with the inclusion of “freedom from want,” suggesting that gov- ernments should act to meet the basic needs of their citizens. The UDHR was ultimately implemented by two international covenants in 1976. The first, the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” restrains government action in ways con- sistent with the U.S. Bill of Rights. The second, the “International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,” requires government action like U.S. political leaders pushed during the eras of the New Deal and Great Society. The United States ratified the first covenant but was almost alone in not ratifying the second. As U.S. officials, we must live with that; but it does require us to make the case that protection for political rights yields responsive governance that is better at delivering “freedom fromwant.” My own work has focused on the protection of the most fundamental rights to life and physical integrity, and on the prosecution of those who violate these rights through the com- mission of mass atrocities. It sometimes seems that my priority is on putting people in jail, while other human rights actors’ prior- ity is on getting people out. But my colleagues recognize that accountability is fundamental to protecting human rights. And I recognize that the less violent deprivations of rights—denial of free expression, association, assembly and of procedural safe- guards in criminal cases—open the way for mass atrocities. I am okay with the present emphasis on religious freedom, particularly as so many of the mass atrocities in today’s world are being committed on a sectarian basis—against the Yezidis in Iraq, the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uyghurs in China, for