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What the Hell Happened to Biden’s Human Rights Agenda? [1]

['Matthew Duss', 'How To Save A Country', 'Jake Werner', 'Sam Fraser', 'Prem Thakker', 'Tori Otten']

Date: 2023-06-19

Further underscoring the administration’s de-prioritization of human rights, two and a half years into his presidency, Biden’s State Department still does not have an assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, the top official for global human rights and democracy efforts. Having nominated one of Washington’s leading human rights champions, Sarah Margon, for the role, and standing by as she bravely endured a grueling series of interrogations, the administration eventually folded in the face of Republican obstruction and withdrew her nomination.

To be fair, the Biden administration has shown that it can hold some perpetrators to account—when perpetrators are adversaries. China, Russia, and Iran have been targeted by (entirely justified) measures, but thus far the administration’s approach seems to be that the United States will impose consequences for abuses only when all the strategic incentives line up correctly and won’t create domestic political headaches. Ultimately, this approach undermines the cause of human rights globally, as it shows everyone—friends and enemies alike—that human rights criticism is just one more cudgel to be wielded against governments the U.S. currently doesn’t like while giving a pass to governments it currently does. This doesn’t reinforce human rights norms; it reinforces the selectivity of those norms. If we want to know why much of the global south remains skeptical of the U.S. claim to be supporting democracy against authoritarianism in Ukraine, we can start here.

This is not to say the cupboard is completely bare. The administration took an early step protecting a key human right by reversing the Mexico City Policy (a.k.a. the “global gag rule”), which barred U.S. funds from going to organizations that make referrals for abortion or discuss abortion as an option. Its restrictions on government use of spyware announced in March were a good step toward limiting the proliferation of cyber tools used against civil and human rights activists around the world. The administration’s global economic strategy, articulated in a May speech by national security adviser Jake Sullivan, marks a long overdue break from corporate-dictated market orthodoxy. This has created an enormous opportunity for building a more just and equitable global economic system. But that opportunity will be squandered if our entire foreign policy is refracted through the lens of great-power competition, whose logic requires the downplaying of abuses by partners and sees relationships with repressive governments as assets to be preserved, no matter how harsh their repression.

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[1] Url: https://newrepublic.com/article/173752/what-happened-biden-human-rights-agenda-modi

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