The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2019 23 tedious to produce. This is one of the rea- sons these positions are usually assigned to the entry level. But the department has streamlined requirements for the report significantly, and this is but one task among many for a human rights officer. An effective human rights officer leads diplomatic engagement year-round: pressing host governments for progress on emblematic cases; lobbying against legislative changes that would undermine rights and freedoms; advising USAID and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs on foreign assis- tance; ensuring our security relationships align with our human rights agenda; crafting strategy for the front office on democracy and human rights; and more. Many junior officers perform admira- bly in these difficult positions despite their inexperience and the odds stacked against them. Nevertheless, many others are set up to fail, and the corrosive effect is to spread corridor wisdom that the way to get ahead as a political-coned FSO is to shy away from too much human rights work. Changing this reality requires re-grad- ing many of the human rights officer posi- tions to the mid-level FS-3, -2 and -1. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), which conducts an annual policy review process to assign countries priority rankings based on human rights trends, should lead the effort to regrade human rights positions to coincide with the priority assigned each country. There are exceptions to the rule that field positions focused on human rights are limited to the entry level. Given the Colombian peace process, and responsi- bility for managing a sensitive high-vol- ume Leahy vetting portfolio, the human rights officer in Bogotá is an FS-2. The incumbent wields the clout that normally comes with being a relatively senior offi- cer. She has logged notable wins, ensuring that attacks on human rights defenders receive the attention they deserve in our foreign policy and foreign assistance. Still, other important human rights positions are graded too low. Cambodia is experiencing a disastrous reversal of its democratic experiment, yet the human rights officer is an FS-4 position. The human rights officer in Mexico City was until recently an FS-3 billet even though the incumbent has to manage rights reporting by nine constituent posts in a challenging country context. An FS-2 is now assigned to lead the embassy’s human rights and migration unit, but the practical effect of having a dual-hatted incumbent is to shortchange human rights. 3. Strengthen Human Rights Training with a Regional Focus American evangelism for democratic values can trigger passionate protests that we disrespect national sovereignty, misunderstand cultural realities, discredit progress on social and economic indica- tors, discount the difficulty of incremental change or destabilize challenging political environments. For that reason, human rights diplo- macy requires a deep understanding of other cultures and their values, so that we can identify and explain points of convergence—what the political philoso- pher Michael Walzer calls “minimalist” universal moral principles—in a language that resonates with each culture’s particu- lar experience. The particularities of culture give universal values local meaning and vigor. FSOs need to know these cultural touch- stones cold and be prepared to deploy them in their diplomacy. Foreign Service Institute training pre- pares FSOs to parry charges of hypocrisy on human rights (guidance: admit we are not perfect, but emphasize our inde- pendent court system endeavors to hold violators to account). But FSI area studies and human rights instructors should design follow-on mod- ules specific to each world region to help human rights officers advance universal values using the language of local cultural realities. FSOs need to understand where the country to which they are assigned stands on its democratic journey, and how democratic transitions come about. The goal should be to explain how FSOs can operate in a global context in which “a pervasive, at least ostensible, commitment to democratic government” has emerged, as Walzer puts it, in tandem with “an equally pervasive, and more actual, commitment to cultural autonomy and national independence.” The stories that resonate in Colombo are different from those that resonate in Colombia. President Iván Duque Márquez has a bust of Abraham Lincoln on his desk, but he may be the exception that proves the rule; other Latin American leaders might be less receptive to hearing about houses divided against themselves than to quotes from the likes of Benito Juárez, president of Mexico from 1861 to 1872, who said: “Respect for the rights of others is peace.” Human rights diplomacy requires a mastery of the core competencies we expect FSOs to develop over the course of their careers, yet most human rights positions are entry-level.