John Shattuck: By Admitting Its Human Rights Problems, the U.S. Helps Other Nations Admit Theirs
[John Shattuck is a former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, a former US Ambassador to the Czech Republic, and the current president of Central European University in Budapest. A version of this essay previously appeared on The Hill’s Congress Blog.]
...Isn’t UN-sponsored human rights reporting just a platform for human rights abusers? On the contrary, these international obligations strengthen the case against abusive governments, especially if they lie. History is replete with examples.
In the Helsinki Accords of 1975, the Soviet Union agreed to recognize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in exchange for US and European recognition of the borders of Eastern Europe. The Soviets thought they were getting something for nothing. They had no intention of giving human rights to their citizens.
But their rhetoric gave international legitimacy to the fledgling dissident movement inside the Soviet Union and its satellites. In 1977 Vaclav Havel launched the famous Charter 77 movement in Prague; Andrei Sakharov soon began a similar drive in Russia. These movements contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet collapse in 1991....
Read entire article at CS Monitor
...Isn’t UN-sponsored human rights reporting just a platform for human rights abusers? On the contrary, these international obligations strengthen the case against abusive governments, especially if they lie. History is replete with examples.
In the Helsinki Accords of 1975, the Soviet Union agreed to recognize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in exchange for US and European recognition of the borders of Eastern Europe. The Soviets thought they were getting something for nothing. They had no intention of giving human rights to their citizens.
But their rhetoric gave international legitimacy to the fledgling dissident movement inside the Soviet Union and its satellites. In 1977 Vaclav Havel launched the famous Charter 77 movement in Prague; Andrei Sakharov soon began a similar drive in Russia. These movements contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet collapse in 1991....