Human rights activists slam Mike Pompeo’s newly unveiled Commission on Unalienable Rights

New York Daily News, The (NY)

Jul. 9--Human rights group have lashed out at a new panel formed by the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which aims to reevaluate the role of the the State Department in dealing with human rights issues.

In an opinion piece published on the Wall Street Journal Sunday, Pompeo announced the creation of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, an advisory board whose mission is "to ground our discussion of human rights in America's founding principles."

On Monday, Pompeo formally announced the formation of the panel saying that "words like 'rights' can be used for good or evil," and that we must "be vigilant that human rights discourse not be corrupted or hijacked or used for dubious or malignant purposes."

He hopes that "the commission will revisit the most basic of questions: What does it mean to say or claim that something is, in fact, a human right?"

Activists have sounded the alarm, worried that the commission can potentially hinder the rights of marginalized communities, particularly by undermining LGBTQ and abortion rights.

In May, a notice published in the Federal Register stated that the commission's job is to provide "fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation's founding principles of natural law and natural rights," as the Washington Post reported.

Activists believe that the terms "natural law" and "natural rights" can be used as an argument against same-sex marriage, according to Politico.

"This administration has actively worked to deny and take away long-standing human rights protections since Trump's inauguration. If this administration truly wanted to support people's rights, it would use the global framework that's already in place. Instead, it wants to undermine rights for individuals, as well as the responsibilities of governments," Joanne Lin, national director of advocacy and government affairs at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement.

The move is a "politicization of human rights in order to, what appears to be an attempt to further hateful policies aimed at women and LGBTQ people," Lin added, calling it "shameful."

The panel is an "affront to universal human rights," Jamil Dakwar, ACLU's director of human rights program, wrote on Twitter. "It will no doubt be welcomed by social conservatives who for decades fought against LGBTQ rights, women's rights, affirmative action and economic justice."

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) welcomed the idea.

"USCIRF is very pleased that the State Department is continuing to make human rights an integral part of U.S. foreign policy and relations," Chair Tony Perkins said in a statement.

"We applaud the creation of this Commission as another way of ensuring that the protection of these fundamental rights -- the most foundational of which is freedom of religion or belief -- is a core element of strategic policy discussions," added Perkins, who's served as the president of the Family Research Council (FRC) since 2003.

The FRC is an anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion Christian public policy ministry, which is designated as an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for portraying the LGBTQ community as "a threat to American society."

The appointment of Pompeo's former mentor, Mary Ann Glendon, to head the board has also alarmed human rights activists.

A staunch conservative and Catholic activist, Glendon is the former ambassador to the Holy See (the Vatican) under former President George W. Bush.

A Harvard law professor who has written extensively against abortion rights, Glendon has supported a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. She's also known for her opposition to the use of condoms in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS.

In 2018, she received an award -- the Evangelium Vitae Medal from the University of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture -- for her lifetime work as one of the "heroes of the pro-life movement."

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