Human Rights Receiving Scant Attention in U.S. Presidential Debates

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Human rights has rarely been the focus of politics in the U.S. and the 2008 presidential campaign appears to be no exception. Yet, in recent years several human rights issues have gained prominence on the front pages, for example, the Darfur tragedy in Sudan where more than 300,000 have lost their lives for their ethnic and racial identity, and 2.5 million have been displaced and forced to flee their homes.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) held a news conference on January 9 at their national headquarters where four panelists, who have experiences in particular human rights issues, made comments on the lack of focus on human rights in the presidential candidate debates, and how this situation could be improved.

U.S. policies and actions with respect to human rights controversies have an impact on how the international community regards the United States. Examples of alleged human rights abuses by the U.S. that have been talked about in the mass media more recently are the denial of habeas corpus of terrorist suspects and the use of "harsh" interrogation methods by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stimulus overload, treatment of detainees held at Abu Ghraib, and the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which human rights organizations are calling for its closure.

And, the continued inaction of international community to stop the killing, destruction and terror in Darfur, Sudan has left many Americans feeling guilty, as if complicit in this evil.

"One might assume that human rights would have been more central to the 2008 presidential campaigns to this point than in years past given the relationship of human rights controversies to U.S. policies and interests," said William F. Schulz, Senior Fellow at CAPAC and former executive director of Amnesty International USA (1994-2006).

CAPAF tracked the frequency of times presidential candidates were asked about human rights in the 26 presidential debates up to the end of 2007, and reported the results in tables and histograms. Only 4.7% of the 2,253 questions posed to any of the presidential candidates in the debates through December 2007 were related to human rights, and that was by using a broad definition of a human rights question. CAPAF has no statistics from past presidential campaigns with which to compare to the current one.

The percentage of human rights questions for the Republican candidates was a little lower (4.3%) than for the Democratic candidates (5.1%). The party profiles on the topics asked about differ too. Darfur related questions were raised most often to the Democrat candidates (23 questions or 2% of the total asked of Democratic candidates), but Republican candidates were asked only seven times on this topic, which was not as frequently asked as some other human rights topics. The Republicans were asked the most questions on the category of "torture, interrogation and Guantanamo" (20) and promoting democracy (16).

All of the frequencies, however, are tiny in comparison to the total number of queries: 1,178 for the Democratic candidates and 1,075 for the Republican candidates.

Why then aren't human rights issues more central to the 2008 presidential campaign?

One explanation that the panelists agreed on is that a human rights issue only gets noticed and addressed by our leaders when it has a national compelling interest based on national compelling values, where "we must respond," said Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission, which investigates and rescues victims of physical violence, sexual exploitation, and oppression. There must be "a basis for extending compassion for people who are far away" and "a need [felt] for sacrificial action" to confront the atrocity.

The consensus of the panel was that the American people must be made aware and feel strongly about the issue. The relatively higher attention given to Darfur may be attributed to the extensive grassroots organizing and media outreach—newspaper ads and online positions of the candidates—that were used by the Save Darfur Coalition in making the Darfur tragedy known to the public, according to Coby Rudolph. Some 700 voters in Iowa and 500 in New Hampshire signed newspaper ads to support Darfur, which helped galvanize the local public opinion on the Darur tragedy before the primaries in those states.

The Save Darfur Coalition also helped organize a huge rally in October in South Carolina where 5,000 people came, including the governor and an ex-governor. Many letters to the editor and editorials, including an op-ed by former Governor Jim Hodges, resulted from this rally, according to Rudolph.

Schulz gave several examples of why the campaigns should include more focus on human rights and how human rights issues abroad impact U.S. national interests.

The U.S. is losing jobs overseas, "in part, because Latin America and South East Asia have been allowed to abuse labor rights and in the process made themselves economically more appealing to their manufacturers," said Schulz.

"China-made toys contain toxins because, in part, there is neither a free press nor a vibrant civil society in China to adequately hold toymakers and government regulators to account for their transgressions," said Schulz.

Schulz spoke of the need, given our experiences of Iraq and Sudan, for the candidates to clarify when the United States should commit its blood and treasure to countering regimes that abuse human rights.

Schulz deplored the lack of interest in the International Criminal Court (ICC), about which only one question out of the total of 2,253 was asked of one of the presidential candidates. Established in 2002, the ICC is an "independent, permanent court that tries persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes," according to the official ICC website.

The Bush administration opposes the ICC, but 105 nations are party to it, and so this international tribunal could play a critical role in the future when contemplating military interventions to stop genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Some questions that would serve the U.S. "national interest," according to Schulz include the following:
• When, if ever, should the United States engage in military action to stop genocide or ethnic cleansing?
• Should the United States close the prison camp in Guantanamo? If so, what should be done with the prisoners?
• Should provisions regarding labor rights be included in future trade agreements?

Useful for understanding the U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis human rights was the historical perspective which was brought at the panel discussion by Karen DeYoung, associate editor of the Washington Post and who has written frequently about U.S. foreign policy and human rights. President Jimmy Carter was probably the first president to consciously make human rights the U.S. policy, she said.

"Human rights will be the foundation, the corner stone of his [i.e., Carter's] foreign policy," said DeYoung on Carter's remarks just before taking office. "Every U.S. ambassador would be his personal representative on the subject," and "every U.S. official conversation with a foreign leader would include a discussion on human rights," said DeYoung.

Sometimes the Carter administration lived up to its rhetoric, for example, DeYoung credits the administration for the large Jewish immigration out of the Soviet Union. There were 800 Jews that were permitted to leave in 1977; in 1979, 51,000 Jews were able to leave. Moreover, this phenomenon may have caused the first crack in the Soviet Union itself, said DeYoung. On the other hand, Carter supported for strategic reasons the dictator Mobutu, of what was then called Zaire, and the military in El Salvador.