Individual Rights Must Come Before Protecting Religious Institutions

The Obama Administration has changed the way the United States relates to the world. I tend to think this is good on many levels, but change can be nerve-racking. An example of this is the recent United Nations Human Rights Council resolution regarding freedom of opinion and expression co-authored by the U.S. and Egypt. (You read that right. Egypt, who has demonstrated little interest or understanding of freedom of speech, was our co-author.) The diplomatic importance of reaching out and demonstrating goodwill to our neighbors in the world is obvious, but this resolution makes even some strident Obama supporters a little nervous.

If this resolution, Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Including the Right to Development, is anything, it is another humdrum example of why diplomatic documents accomplish so little. Wait, don’t leave. Before all three of my readers bolt due to a fear of another boring, wonky policy talk; I will step this up.

Some get to Section 4 and begin to hyperventilate. In it, the Council expresses concern “that incidents of racial and religious intolerance, discrimination and related violence, as well as of negative racial and religious stereotyping continue to rise around the world, and condemns, in this context, any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, and urges States to take effective measures, consistent with their obligations under international human rights law, to address and combat such incidents.”

Anne Bayefsky at the Weekly Standard wrote that this troubling paragraph gives license to countries to squash free speech in order to protect religion. She says the resolution shows, “threatening freedom of expression is a price for engagement with the Islamic world that (the Obama Administration) is evidently prepared to pay.”

USAToday contributor Jonathan Turley described the action this way, “Whether defined as hate speech, discrimination or simple blasphemy, governments are declaring unlimited free speech as the enemy of freedom of religion. This growing movement has reached the United Nations, where religiously conservative countries received a boost in their campaign to pass an international blasphemy law.”

I cannot say whether they are right or not. What I can say is that we live in world where diplomacy is anything but clear cut. In these troubling times it is important for the United States to make a gesture of friendship, but it cannot give even the appearance that it accepts a compromise on human rights in the process.

The Egyptian ambassador to the U.N. Hisham Badr said upon passage of the Human Rights Council resolution that “freedom of expression has been sometimes misused” and the “true nature of this right” must yield government limitations. Yikes.

At the same time, U.S. Diplomat Douglas Griffiths said that this resolution “is a manifestation of the Obama administration’s commitment to multilateral engagement throughout the United Nations and of our genuine desire to seek and build cooperation based upon mutual interest and mutual respect in pursuit of our shared common principles of tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” OK, but I would suggest he and his other U.S. colleagues make it clear we do not agree with those who think this document gives even tacit approval of placing church before individual freedom.

Individual rights can never be allowed to be subservient to those granted a religious institution. If the US allows that, 233 years of struggle will have been for naught. U.S. officials need to make this clear when they stand smiling at news conferences with foreign dignitaries and when they face them across a negotiating table.

This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.