Obama and Human Rights: Clarity of Purpose Unmatched by Action

Human Rights Day always leaves me feeling rather pessimistic, as the grand aspirations of the day seem mismatched with reality. I started the day listening to Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, and ended it listening to Susan Rice speak at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum;  both events fit well in a week of writing about the challenges of implementing the UN Convention on the Prevention an d Punishment of Genocide.

Obama's speech was excellent. I still think that the prize should have waited until he did something more substantial to deserve it,  but he handled the situation in the most tactful way possible. And aside from the context, the speech was excellent. His comments on just war, the ugly realities of the world we live in, the need for international cooperation to confront them, and the benefits of smart engagement with rouge regimes give a new level of clarity to an Obama Doctrine of US foreign affairs that is still under construction -- and hopefully, before his presidency is up, will be worthy of the Nobel honor.

My reservations about the speech, and about Rice's remarks at the Holocaust Museum tonight, are due to the fact that this Obama Doctrine is, indeed, still in development. Progress on clarity of purpose is not yet matched by action, leaving the principles established by the president feeling out of sync with reality. In his speech, Obama exalted human rights as a corner stone of peace, yet earlier this week the State Department issued a belated and rather tepid response to a brutal crackdown on protestors in Khartoum, following nearly a year with very little reaction to the repeated human rights violations by the authoritarian regime. Tonight, in response to activist concerns, Susan Rice stated that the administration has "very specific" benchmarks, expectations, incentives, and possible punitive measures set out in the classified sections of the Sudan policy review, but gave no further detail.

The real problem, I think, is a lack of transparency. From the outside, the silence on human rights issues has the appearance of turning a blind eye, and casts a skeptical shadow over Obama's very practical policy of engagement -- it not only gives the appearance of throwing human rights under the bus in order to coax war criminals to put down their guns, but makes it seem like the engagement is going in circles rather than in a forward trajectory. Classified information serves its purpose, but there has to be a middle ground between feeding the public whitewash and posting NSC meetings on YouTube.

Progress towards respect for human rights in repressive societies and conflict zones is, more often than not, haltingly slow. Greater transparency of action that is aligned with greater clarity of principle would go a long way towards making the change we seek in the world, and the challenges that must be confronted along the way, more visible, more understandable, and more tangible.

[Photo from Wikimedia Commons.]