Testimony of

Ambassador John Shattuck

Chief Executive Officer,

John F. Kennedy Library Foundation;

former Assistant Secretary of State,

Democracy, Human Rights and Labor;

former Ambassador to the Czech Republic

At a hearing,

“City on the Hill or Just Another Country?

The United States and the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy”

Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight

Committee on Foreign Affairs

U.S. House of Representatives

Room 2172

Rayburn House Office Building

May 22, 2008

I’m grateful for the opportunity to testify here this afternoon on an issue of profound importance to our country, our national security, and the position of the United States in the world – the promotion of human rights and democracy in our foreign policy. Mr. Chairman, I want to dedicate my testimony to a great American leader, Senator Edward Kennedy, who has dedicated so much of his own extraordinary career to the cause of human rights in the United States and around the world, and who has had a great influence over the years on my own work on these issues.

I’d like to begin by pointing to a disturbing paradox that exists in our foreign policy today. The U.S. today has economic and military assets unparalleled in history, but our influence and standing in the world have hit rock bottom.

One of the reasons for this is that the U.S. today is seen by people in many parts of the world to be a violator, not a defender, of human rights. A poll conducted last year by the BBC in 18 countries on all continents showed that 67 percent disapproved of U.S. detention practices in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Another poll conducted in Germany, Great Britain, Poland and India found that majorities or pluralities believed that the U.S. has engaged in torture and violated international treaties. A third poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations showed that majorities in 13 countries, most of which are traditional allies, believe that “the U.S. cannot be trusted to act responsibly in the world.”

The global perception of a gap between the values the U.S. professes and the way it acts – particularly on human rights and the rule of law – has severely eroded U.S. power and influence.

In a celebrated book entitled, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, Joseph Nye analyzes a nation’s “ability to get what [it] wants through attraction rather than coercion.” Two fundamental principles govern the exercise of power through attraction rather than coercion in the area of human rights.

The first is obeying the law. Human rights are defined and protected by the U.S. Constitution and the international treaties that have been ratified and incorporated into our domestic law. If we are to project ourselves as championing human rights internationally, we must at the very least adhere to the Bill of Rights and the human rights treaties we have ratified. But by flaunting basic requirements of international and domestic law – such as the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – the U.S. government, in the name of fighting terrorism, has created what are in effect a series of “law-free zones.” It is in these “law-free zones” that detainees have been abused, thousands of foreigners have been held indefinitely without being accorded the status of prisoner of war, and repressive regimes around the world have implicitly been given a green light to crack down on political dissidents and religious and ethnic minorities in their own countries.

A second basic guideline for exercising the power of attraction by promoting human rights is to practice what we preach. The U.S. loses credibility when we charge other countries with human rights violations we have committed ourselves. But it is now well documented that in recent years the U.S. has engaged in some of the very practices it has criticized as human rights violations in other countries in the annual State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. For example, detainees in U.S. custody have been brutally abused at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of prisoners have been held without charges and without access to court review in Guantanamo, and a vast warrantless electronic surveillance program has been conducted in apparent violation of federal law. Each of these practices is similar to human rights violations condemned by the State Department in its Country Reports.

Fortunately, history shows that U.S. standing and influence in the world can be restored when our values and our policies on human rights are brought back into alignment. Over the last four decades, the United States has exercised significant powers of attraction in our foreign policy by undertaking a series of major bipartisan human rights initiatives during five separate presidencies—three Republican and two Democratic. President Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, which led to international recognition of the cause of human rights dissidents inside the Soviet bloc. President Carter mobilized democratic governments to press for the release of political prisoners held by repressive regimes. President Reagan signed the Convention Against Torture and persuaded the Senate to ratify it. President George H.W. Bush joined with other governments in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to nurture the new democracies of the post-Cold War world. And President Clinton worked with NATO and the U.N. to implement the Genocide Convention and bring to an end the human rights catastrophe in the Balkans.

The Congress and the next president should follow in the tradition of these major bipartisan achievements on human rights. Let me outline briefly six areas where I believe we can and should act to restore the international credibility of the United States on these issues.

First, we should signal to the world that we stand for the rule of law and that we adhere to our own laws. Over the last sixty years the United States has ratified and adopted as part of our domestic law nineteen international human rights treaties and conventions. In many cases, such as the Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention Against Torture, the United States was deeply involved in drafting and promoting these treaties, and we have a special obligation to see that they are enforced.

For this reason I strongly endorse the Chairman’s bill, introduced last week as H.R. 6054, to create a bipartisan United States Human Rights Commission that would monitor compliance by the U.S. with all international human rights treaties to which the U.S. is a party. This Commission would respond to the need for effective implementation and enforcement of human rights law by the U.S. It would be patterned after the Congressional Helsinki Commission, which has made far-reaching contributions to human rights during and after the Cold War by monitoring international compliance with the Helsinki Accords that gave legitimacy to the political and civil rights movement inside the countries of the former Soviet bloc. The one suggestion I would make to improve this important bill is to require that the annual report it mandates be prepared jointly by the Secretary of State and the Attorney General, who is, after all, the nation’s chief law enforcement official, responsible for enforcing all our international treaty obligations domestically.

Second, the new President should take several specific and immediate steps to rebuild U.S. international credibility on human rights. The President should announce that the U.S. will close the detention center at Guantanamo and transfer all detainees to the U.S. or their home countries for trial. Restoring the policy of providing individualized status hearings to detainees would demonstrate compliance with international norms without restricting the government’s capacity to conduct lawful interrogations. Fully complying with the Geneva Conventions also would not preclude the U.S. from trying detainees in military commissions with full due process of law.

Third, the President should announce that the U.S. will take the lead in working with other countries to draft a comprehensive treaty defining and condemning terrorism within the framework of international human rights law. Working toward a consensus on the global issue of terrorism would counter the claim that differences in cultural values, religious beliefs, political philosophies, or justifiable ends make it impossible to define terrorism as a crime against humanity. A terrorism treaty would also reinforce the protection given to political speech under existing human rights law.

Fourth, the President and the Congress should make clear that the U.S. is prepared to strengthen the system of international human rights law it has helped create over the last six decades. Important treaties such as the Convention to End Discrimination Against Women have lingered for years in the Senate and should now be ratified. Doing so will help restore U.S. leadership on human rights.

Fifth, the U.S. should support those seeking to promote the rule of law, democracy and human rights in their own countries. Democracy and human-rights activists are at the front lines of the international struggle against terrorism, genocide, and nuclear proliferation. But democracy and human rights can never be delivered through the barrel of a gun. Assistance to those who are working to build their own democratic societies must be carefully planned; delivered within an international framework, not unilaterally; sustained over time; and based on an understanding of the unique circumstances and profound differences among cultures, religions, and societies.

Finally, the U.S. should join with other countries, alliances, and international organizations to reassert America’s role in working to prevent or stop genocide and crimes against humanity. Extensive diplomatic and economic tools can be used to head off an impending genocide, but international intervention under the U.N. Security Council’s doctrine of “the responsibility to protect” should be invoked in situations like Darfur when all other approaches have been exhausted.

Mr. Chairman, I’m submitting for the record an article that sets forth my views on these issues in greater detail. In conclusion, let me say that by recommitting the U.S. to a foreign policy conducted within the framework of human rights and the rule of law, I believe the President, the Congress and the American people can restore U.S. moral leadership in the world – and by doing so, significantly strengthen our national security.