Brave New White House
President-elect Obama’s message of change captured the American people but what will change first? Dr. Catherine Powell hopes “as a new administration takes office in January 2009, it will . . . reaffirm and strengthen the longstanding commitment of the United States to human rights at home and abroad.”
A Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Dr. Catherine Powell believes it is essential that “from the outset of his Administration, the new President should ensure that human rights principles are incorporated into the mainstream of U.S. policy.” To assist the new Administration in promoting these rights, Dr. Powell wrote Human Rights at Home: A Domestic Policy Blueprint for the Next Administration.
Dr. Powell writes, “As we prepare for the ritual of transition from one presidential administration to the next, the idea of creating new forms of governance to affirm the human rights principles on which this great nation was built seems both a very old idea and a new idea whose time has come . . . [old] because it is the foundation of our national identity . . . [new] because we Americans typically refer to human rights when discussing events outside the United States.” The new administration will soon take office and “will have the opportunity to strengthen . . . human rights, both abroad and right here at home.”
Published by American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, the blueprint lays out the steps President-elect Obama can take immediately when he steps into office “to underscore [his] commitment to leadership on human rights.” In the first one hundred days of the Obama Administration, Dr. Powell believes an Executive Order “to reconstitute and revitalize an Interagency Working Group on Human Rights which will serve as a coordinating body among federal agencies and departments for the promotion and respect of human rights and the implementation of human rights obligations in U.S. domestic policy” needs to be issued.
Beyond the first one hundred days of the new Administration, Obama should “build and support two distinct human rights institutions: an implementation body and a monitoring body.” The implementation body should be the Interagency Working Group on Human Rights created by the Executive Order. This interagency working group “should play a proactive role, crossing the domestic-international divide by ensuring that U.S. international human rights responsibilities are implemented and coordinated among all relevant executive branch agencies and departments.” The monitoring body should be “financed by the government but would operate as an independent, nonpartisan entity. This new body should take the form of a national human rights commission, which would provide expertise and oversight to ensure human rights progress in the United States.” These bodies would help advance human rights in the United States and ensure our international activities do not violate the rights assured in the United States. Additional legislation must be passed and treaties must be signed to guarantee all human rights are protected domestically and internationally, she argues. If the institutions for promoting human rights are supported and active, then legislation will pass and treaties will be signed.
Lance Nation is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
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