More than 30 religious leaders on Monday issued a warning against the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
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In a statement, religious leaders of all denominations warned that Pompeo’s push for a hierarchy of rights with religious freedom at the top “will weaken religious freedom itself and undermine respect and damage the protection of the universal values of human dignity. “
The statement was chaired by the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan progressive policy institute, and signed by leaders of the Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Buddhist faiths.
The statement came in response to the secretary’s recent submission of a draft report from the State Department’s Commission on Alienable Rights that defined human rights as a hierarchy with property rights and religious freedom in the part higher. Critics fear the report lays the foundation for how the agency will prioritize monitoring human rights abroad.
Pompeo had created the commission to reexamine how the United States defines human rights, based on texts from the United States’ foundation such as the 1948 Declaration of Independence and the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
But Democrats and human rights organizations have criticized the commission and its report for backing down human rights protections for LGBTQ people and a woman’s right to abortion.
Monday’s statement echoed those concerns, warning that Pompeo “will seek to use the Commission’s report to justify the marginalization of certain rights, thereby lessening the defense of human rights and stifling liability claims for those whose rights have been violated. “
The commission’s report is open for a two-week comment period before a final version is released. The religious leaders in their statement urged the members of the commission to publish a final version that rejects a hierarchy of rights and “firmly defends the universality and indivisibility of rights.”
Religious leaders, in their statement, warned that “freedom of religion should never be used as a pretext to diminish other rights that we cherish, or to justify the violation of those other universal human rights.”
Such politicization of human rights, and freedom of religion in particular, is dangerous, particularly now as the forces of authoritarianism are increasing across the world, “the statement said.
“We urge commission members to consider the risks of complicity in such an effort and use this comment period to ensure that the final version of the commission’s report firmly upholds the universality and indivisibility of the rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Rights. Humans . “
Other signatories to the statement included academics, human rights defenders, and former State Department officials, including former Ambassador to the Holy See Miguel H. Díaz and Ahmed Younis, a former official with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.
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